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By granting outposts to chefs such as Emeril Lagasse, Thomas Keller, Alain Ducasse, Charlie Palmer, Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Vegas dining has become so high-end it employs more master sommeliers than any other U.S. city. The hotels only get more and more extravagant and opulent. One of the must-have features is a posh spa: every Strip hotel has one, such as the 69,000-sq.-ft. Canyon Ranch SpaClub at the Venetian, which has a two-story rock-climbing wall. Luxury designer shops, from Louis Vuitton and Gucci to Armani and Dior, are so common that they seem practically like Gaps in Vegas. Just down the Strip from the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, which is inside the Venetian, the Bellagio houses another impressive gallery, which showcases works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There is even a push to move the Montreal Expos to town. Real estate companies are racing to Manhattanize the place by building high-rise condos in the middle of vast, cheap desert.
A good chunk of this 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, in 1995 built the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in the middle of the sagebrush off the Strip. "It was totally intuitive," he says. 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. Our dealers earn more in tips than any other dealers in Vegas." The hotel has a Sunday daytime pool party called Rehab, a Mexican restaurant called the Pink Taco and live webcams at the pool for its website. (What happens in Vegas goes right up on the Internet--the way everyone likes it.) The penthouse contains the giant Boom-Boom Room, which has a bowling alley, sauna and--like seemingly every party bus, large hotel suite and open flat space in town--a stripper pole. Las Vegas is on orange alert as far as emergency stripping preparation is concerned.
The Hard Rock's Saturday night comedy show, Beacher's Madhouse, is less about jokes than celebrity spotting, audience flashing, contortionists, midgets, monkeys and Jackass-style stunts. "People come to Vegas to release," says Jeffrey Beacher, a comedian who went unnoticed in New York City and now headlines a show it's impossible to get tickets to.
Following Morton's lead, the owners of Palms Casino Resort, which opened at the end of 2001, decided to aim even younger. The Maloof brothers, who own the Sacramento Kings basketball team, sold their local casino and built the Palms off-Strip and gave it no particular theme, figuring Vegas visitors would find out which hotel fit their demographic. (Wynn will also be unthemed, as will the Palazzo. The MGM Grand and the Mandalay Bay have almost entirely shed their film and Asian themes.) "I wanted to build the ultimate party place," says George Maloof, 40, the brother who runs the hotel. "I wanted to make sure I cultivated young Hollywood. In the '70s, '80s and most of the '90s, Hollywood didn't really come to Las Vegas except for a big fight. Now it's every weekend."