When I was in Las Vegas last month, the one thing I wanted to see was the Bellagio. It’s known to be one of the most luxurious hotels in Vegas right next to Caeser’s Palace.
I’ve been lucky to have been to Vegas before but that was when I was a little boy. Back then I was staying in the pyramid-like hotel called Luxor and I remember seeing a whole lot of hotels being constructed. One of them was called New York New York and another one called Paris. I remember people saying then that there was going to be a big rollercoaster on New York New York and Paris was going to have an Eiffel tower to it.
Last month, I actually got to see the hotels all completed and open for business for years.
Since then more hotels opened up. One of them was something I always heard about on TV: The Bellagio. See I hear all about Las Vegas because I love the TV Show not ironically called Las Vegas as well. It’s a TV show about a team of people running a fictional casino hotel in Las Vegas.
I also know a bit about the history of Las Vegas because I read a book about Vegas some time back (can’t remember what it was called). About how it came about and how Steve Wynn played a really important part in it. Here’s what I remember from it.
Steve Wynn was a pioneer when it comes to Las Vegas hotels. Before, hotels in Las Vegas used to be simple. They had basic amenities and avoided being too comfortable because they wanted people to spend more time in the casinos than in their rooms. Wynn changed that when he built the Mirage.
It was the first Las Vegas hotel with a theme. It had a forest in the inside and a volcano on the outside.
After that he went on to build a family-oriented kind of hotel called Treasure Island which was Pirate themed. It was again another first in Las Vegas. It was only after he brought these kind of hotels to Vegas did other hotels focus on themes like Paris Las Vegas, New York New York or even the Venetian today.
Then one day he had the idea to build a hotel where the theme would be LUXURY. He found it odd that in a city like Las Vegas there wasn’t yet a hotel whose main focus and theme was LUXURY. So he started work on an almost 4,000 room hotel known today as the Bellagio.
The Bellagio when it was built was the most expensive casino hotel ever built costing a total of $1.6 billion. According to the book, that didn’t even include another $400 million in which Wynn spent on Art which be bought from auction houses all over the world. It was with building The Bellagio did he find his passion in art since any luxury hotel had to have some level of fine art.
The Bellagio, as beautiful as it was also happened to be his downfall. Mirage Resorts was Wynn’s listed company which built and owned all his hotels from Mirage all the way to the Bellagio. Because he was so passionate about making sure the Bellagio was perfect, he spent a lot of time and money on the project. So much that his shareholders began to worry and eventually the share price came low enough for a competitor of his to buy him out (MGM).
The book went on to tell how that was a down in his life. Some sort like how Steve Jobs was feeling when he got kicked out of Apple decades ago.
So it’s because of this story of Wynn that the Bellagio was something I always wanted to see. I wanted to see how something a perfectionist spared no expense to create looked like. The Bellagio was indeed beautiful in real life. I didn’t get a chance to stay there because the rooms were just too expensive though I made it a point to come back one day and try it out.
The Bellagio is known for the beautiful fountain show here.
I took a video of the fountain and wanted to share it here but I watching the video, I realized that it really doesn’t compare to seeing it in real life. So for that reason, I’d say… don’t spoil the experience by watching a video of the fountain. Make it a dream to one day be able to go to Vegas and see the fountain with your own eyes 🙂
So there’s a really simple version of The Story of The Bellagio 🙂
Ending Note: Since Steve Wynn sold Mirage Resorts (which included to Bellagio) to MGM, he started another a very successful hotel of his own called Wynn. He was apparently really against naming the hotel after himself but was convinced by research that showed his name brought a premium perception to the hotel and allowed it to charge higher rates. Steve Wynn today is today worth $1.5 billion and is one of Las Vegas’ Legends.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space