The Venetian Macau Casino is one of the greatest construction achievements of modern man and one hell of a business plan. Located within a five hour plane flight of 50% of the world’s population, the Venetian was a guaranteed success before the foundation was ever poured. The resort welcomed 130,000 visitors in the first 24 hours and over 10 million in its first 5 months of operation. Sheldon G. Adelson, the richest American you’ve never heard of and largely responsible for the rise of Las Vegas, has turned the small peninsula of Macau into the foremost gambling region in the world.

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The structure was finished in just 3 years and was quickly followed by Adelson’s next project: the Cotai Strip. The influx of visitors willing to pay for five star hotel rooms and gamble away their hard-earned income hasn’t slowed down either, silencing all of the naysayers who questioned this new type of casino. The move was brilliant and his 2.3 billion dollar investment is chump change compared to the profits he will eventually reap.

Some things to keep in mind besides the monetary values: the “complex” is built on top of a swamp which had to be drained for the construction to start, typhoon season battled the workers’ efforts for much of the construction, and the majority of the hotel was built off-site prior to being added (concrete doesn’t cure fast enough for them to have kept up with the casino mogul’s deadline), and all of the replicated artwork was hand-crafted by Chinese-trained artists who were thrown into an Western European art crash course. The fact that the Macau Venetian and Cotai Strip went fully operational in about five years is amazing–Vegas took over 75 years to develop.

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