Vegas' Latest Long Shot

The Venetian will charge top rates in a city awash in hotels

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By Ronald Grover

April 12, 1999 at 4:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

It's nearing 7 p.m. on Friday, and Sheldon Adelson is eating frozen yogurt on his private Gulfstream III, heading from Las Vegas to Van Nuys, Calif. The 64-year-old Adelson, the man who made nearly a billion dollars off selling the Comdex computer show, has one more mission for the day: to check out a faux-Italian mural that will grace the ceiling of Las Vegas' newest swank hotel, the Venetian.

This is Adelson's baby, his $1.2 billion tribute to the fabled Adriatic city rising smack in the middle of the Vegas strip. Like the ultra-elegant Bellagio, which Mirage Resorts Inc. Chairman Steve Wynn opened two miles down the strip in October, the Venetian is part of the latest strategic gamble by Vegas hoteliers: elaborate resort-style hotels that are destinations in themselves, not just convenient places for tourists to flop between trips to the shows and casinos.