The Cotai Strip in Macau, China is an impressive site to behold, so I am told. Macau was a Portuguese colony until 1999, then it was handed over to the People’s Republic of China. Macau is still supposed to maintain a certain degree of autonomy until 2049 per the transition agreement.  It is the only place with legal gambling within hundreds of miles in the most densely populated region of the world.  In 2002, the red tape was cut and six gambling licenses were issued to U.S. companies.  This precipitated one of the most expansive and fervently-paced construction projects in history.

The Venetian Macau, a Las Vegas Sands resort property on the Cotai Strip is the third largest building in the world. It is what is known as a fully-integrated resort because it includes the following small list of amenities: three thousand guest suites, 1.2 million square feet of convention space, 1.6 million square feet of retail space, the largest casino space in the world at 550,000 square feet, and to top it off: a 15,000 seat arena that can host concerts or sporting events.

As the name would indicate, the Cotai Strip will encompass many resorts once completed.  The Venetian is one of many mega-resorts that brought 22 million visitors in 2006 and 25 million in 2007.  As the captive market is seemingly an endless horde of tourists from mainland China and Hong Kong, the hotels continue to go up.  Macau is the most densely populated place in the world with 18,196 people per square kilometer.  The entire Cotai Strip is planned from the start, unlike the Las Vegas Strip, and this results in a far more elegant design.

It turns out that it is not that difficult for U.S. citizen to go to Macau because it still maintains its own currency, immigration policies, police force, budget and taxation.  English is spoken, not widely, but those who speak it may be hotel employees since the islands’ economies rest mostly on the shoulders of the tourism industry.

Cotai Strip Panoramic photo courtesy of Flikr user b.cx under the CC license.