(I haven't had a chance to visit Vegas since the City Center complex opened but I found this article interesting. This opinion piece is from Travel Weekly a Travel industry publication. Let me know if you like this kind of material. CityCenter link- TB)
Opinion - BFebruary 01, 2010
We've all been asked, "What's your favorite place in the world?" "Kathmandu in 1984," is my standard reply.
The 1984 part is as important as Kathmandu. For a decade or so after I was there, I would simply reply, "Kathmandu," but somewhere in the mid-'90s, people who had been there more recently than I would arch an eyebrow and respond, "Really?" It turned out that the previously laid-back ambience of Nepal's capital had been altered by the emergence of an army of pesky touts. The city's calm had been replaced with hassle and hustle.
Of course, that news didn't lessen the profundity of my experiences in Kathmandu. But it did underscore how travel can be as much a function of calendars as maps.
Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Las Vegas. It is a relatively new city (as a popular casino and resort destination, it is scarcely 65 years old), but it has undergone near-constant evolution. Despite the preservative powers of dry desert air, it would take a trained forensic archaeologist to find remnants of Early Era Las Vegas properties.
Over the past 25 years, the progression of change in Las Vegas has only accelerated. Steve Wynn changed the dynamic significantly with the opening of the Mirage in 1989, ushering in the Resort Era and significantly broadening the city's appeal beyond its gaming base. Theme resorts in particular proliferated through the '90s, with destinations (Venice, New York, Paris, Monte Carlo) and storied civilizations, real and imagined (Luxor, Excalibur), providing a structure to inform the property's architecture, interior design and cocktail waitress apparel.
Toward the end of the theme craze, Wynn struck again with the Bellagio, ostensibly destination-themed (Bellagio is a real town on the shores of Lake Como,
Italy) but decidedly upscale, with a focus on outstanding restaurants and with splashes of both culture (an in-house art collection) and water (traffic-stopping fountains). Importantly, it brought cachet to a Vegas property. To say you were staying at the Bellagio was to say you could afford to stay at the Bellagio.
As I was told repeatedly during a three-day visit to Las Vegas last month, the recently opened CityCenter project defines the dawning of the destination's next era. It replaces cacophony with intimacy, garishness with understatement, crass with class.
Is it a game-changer? An argument could be made that CityCenter merely isolated, replicated and refined emerging Las Vegas trends, then repackaged them on a massive scale. The pleasant, muted palettes and design sensibility found in the rooms of Vdara and Aria are reminiscent of those seen in TheHotel within Mandalay Bay. Some of the celebrity chefs featured in CityCenter properties were opening their second, third and even fifth Las Vegas restaurants. And while entertaining waterworks by the design firm Wet and a new Cirque du Soleil show have the potential to raise the bar on their previous accomplishments, the bar was already put in place long ago.
Ironically, what is most innovative about CityCenter is unlikely to be trendsetting. In contrast to most properties on the Strip, CityCenter's imposing profile and thoughtful attention to detail appear to have been driven by architects, designers and curators rather than marketers. It is well planned and well executed, and it incorporates cutting-ed
