Lovin' Las Vegas

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Sexification has helped put Vegas on course for a record year in visitors, after having 35.5 million last year. Billy Vassiliadis, the ad man whose firm came up with Vegas' logo and who is known around town as Billy V., insists: "It's not about sex, it's about feeling sexy." Sex, sexy — whatever. It's selling, and not just at home; as Billy V. says, "Demand for the Las Vegas product has become global." Last year, Vegas lured 362,000 visitors from the U.K., up nearly 25% from 2002. Eager to tap foreign markets, the local convention authority has offices in Germany — which sent nearly 100,000 visitors to the city in 2003 — as well as Australia, Japan and South Korea. International air service to Vegas' McCarran Airport has more than doubled in the past year. Last week, Britain's bmi airline announced that, from Oct. 31, it will fly nonstop three times a week to Vegas from Manchester, England.

So it's no surprise that MGM Mirage announced last week that its second-quarter profits nearly doubled from 2003. According to Joseph Greff of Fulcrum Global Partners, room rates in top hotels on the Strip are up 40% from the same period last year, but the increase didn't stop occupancy from zooming to 95%. The city's casinos, hotels, restaurants, shops and clubs took in a record $32.8 billion in 2003. Vegas is the fastest-growing major U.S. city; 7,000 people move to Clark County each month, bulging the population to 1.6 million and overstretching the police, fire fighters, hospitals and schools. The unemployment rate is more than a third below the national average, and there's more construction than in any other American city.

The hotels only get more and more extravagant. One must-have feature is a posh spa, such as the 6,400-sq-m Canyon Ranch SpaClub at the Venetian, which has a two-story rock-climbing wall. Vegas dining has become so high-end, with restaurants run by chefs such as Alain Ducasse, Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, that it employs more master sommeliers than any other U.S. city. Luxury shops — Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Armani, Dior — are so common that they seem practically like Gaps in Vegas. Just down the Strip from the Venetian, home to the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, the Bellagio houses a gallery that shows works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A good chunk of Vegas' growth is driven by people under 30, the ones who can spend money until at least 7 a.m., apparently with no significant stomach problems. Peter Morton, 56, the first to see that youth was an untapped market, built the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in the middle of the sagebrush off the Strip in 1995, and that demo is funding the Richard Meier-designed tower he's building later this year. "Our demographics studies have shown that young people who come to Vegas are better educated, have more disposable income and are less averse to travel than the typical Vegas customer," he says. "Our dealers earn more in tips than any other dealers in Vegas." The Hard Rock has a Sunday daytime pool party called Rehab, and live webcams at the pool for its website. (What happens in Vegas goes right up on the Internet — the way everyone likes it.) Its penthouse boasts the Boom-Boom Room, with a bowling alley, sauna and — like seemingly every party bus, large hotel suite and open flat space in town — a stripper pole.