Casinos: not just betting, but glamour and glitz
Casinos: not just betting, but glamour and glitz
The casinos at the Las Vegas Strip in the 1940s, like the El Rancho and Flamingo, were dingy ,dark, and small analogized to nowdays high-end glamour of the Mirage or Bellagio.
The revolution point likely arrivate with Ceasars Palace, built in 1967, when its possessor acknowledged that ”there’s got to be more than just slot machines,” said David Schwartz, administrator of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
”Before that, casinos were very functional — they had table games,slot machines, a buffet, the showroom and boom, that was about it,” Schwartz said. “Whereas at The Mirage, there’s a rainforest in there. A volcano. Tiger habitat. A lot has modified.”
In the 1990s, expanded competition continued to pressure casinos to find the newest loisirs, changing them into entertainment centers, he said.
”There was a lot more competition from other cities, inducting places like Florida,” Schwartz said. “And when players can play slots an hour’s drive away, they don’t have a valid reason to hop on a plane for four hours.
“You’ve got to give them a reason.”
But the era of the vast casino ”barns” may be waning.
Schwartz said the Wynn casino in Macau, the latest gambling hot spot in China, is moving more toward intimate spaces similar to those of the Wynn casino in Las Vegas.
”It feels smaller, but in a good way,” Schwartz said.
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