The Venetian Macao is a casino resort in Cotai, Macau owned by the Las Vegas Sands hotel-casino chain. The Venetian is a 32-storey, $1.8 billion anchor for the 7 resort hotels just completed or still under construction on the Cotai Strip in Macau. Venetian Macao covers an area of 10.5 million square foot, and is billed as the largest single structure hotel building in Asia and the second-largest building in the world.
The main hotel tower was completed in July 2007 and the resort officially opened on August 28, 2007. It has 3000 suites, 1.2 million square feet of convention space and 1.6 million square feet of retail. Its casiono space of 550,000 square feet of casino space is the largest in the world. It has 3400 slot machines and 800 gambling tables and a 15,000 seat arena for entertainment/sports events.
One of the highlights of the Venetian Macao is the replica of the Grand Canal in Venice, including a replica of St. Mark's Square and the Rialto Bridge. Visitors can take gondola rides to the accompaniment of Italian opera singing. The Canadian circus troupe Cirque du Soleil is planning to open a residency show at the Venetian Macao in the spring of 2008.
American billionaire Sheldon Adelson announced that the $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel on Cotai will contribute massively to the development of the Cotai Strip, adding that he planned to add a few more hotels such as the Four Seasons, Sheraton and St. Regis to Cotai, totalling the investment of his Las Vegas Sands (which also runs the Sands Macao on the Macau peninsula), to $12 billion by 2010.
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