Nevada.

LAS VEGAS 

Las Vegas enjoyed quite a year in 2003 as it hosted 35 million visitors and welcomed the addition of more than 3,800 hotel rooms to its burgeoning tally of 130,850. This year promises to be just as memorable. The Las Vegas Monorail will open this spring and is expected to carry 19 million visitors during its first year of operation. The $650 million, driverless transit system will run along the east side of the strip, connecting the Las Vegas Convention Center with many of the city's largest hotels.

One of the hotels connected to the privately funded Monorail is the Imperial Palace. The Palace specializes in small group meetings with 35,000 square feet of meeting space, a 9,660-square-foot ballroom, 2,700 guest rooms, a 75,000-square-foot casino, a full-service business center, 10 specialty restaurants, and a full-service health and fitness center.

Another stop along the monorail route is Bally's and its directly connected, sister property Paris Las Vegas. Bally's offers 2,814 guest rooms and more than 175,000 square feet of meeting space in 43 self-contained rooms. When combined with the meeting space at the 2,916-room Paris Las Vegas, Bally's can offer meeting planners more than 300,000 square feet of space.

Nearly 6,500 hotel rooms will be added to the Las Vegas room inventory across the next two years. In 2004, several hotel-casino resorts are scheduled to complete their multimilion-dollar projects, including the Bellagio's 925-room addition and the 296-room addition to the Green Valley Ranch.

Last fall, Mandalay Bay opened a 1,122-room, 43-story hotel tower called THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. The all-suite hotel features a full-service spa, 20,000 square feet of meeting space, high-speed Internet access, a 220-seat restaurant, and a 200-seat lounge on the 43rd floor. The new hotel comes on the heels of the January 2003 opening of Mandalay Bay's new convention center, which features almost 1 million square feet of gross exhibit space and the nation's largest hotel ballroom at 100,000 pillar-free square feet. Mandalay Bay also opened its 100,000-square-foot Manaday Place retail center last fall. It offers 4,342 guest rooms overall and a 12,000-seat events center.

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Last summer, the Venetian Resort opened a $250 million expansion that included 1,013 additional suites and 150,000 square feet of meeting space. The Venice-themed resort now has 4,049 suites and nearly 1.9 million square feet of meeting and exhibit space when combined with the adjacent Sands Expo Center.

The Flamingo opened a new 18,000-square-foot, 14-room conference center last year as well. It now offers more than 3,500 guest rooms and more than 50,000 square feet of meeting space, including the 20,800-square-foot Sunset Ballroom.

Opening in time for this year's holiday shopping season will be the $139 million expansion of the Caesars Palace's Forum Shops. The venue, which attracted nearly 18 million visitors in 2002, is adding 175,000 square feet to its existing 500,000 square feet of upscale retailers and restaurants. Last year, Caesars marked the arrival of Celine Dion and the Colosseum, a $95 million, 4,000-seat performance hall that boasts the largest LED (light emitting diode) screen in North America. Caesars also is adding 1,000 guest rooms by 2005.

The biggest project in Las Vegas is the $2.5 billion Wynn Las Vegas Resort, now under construction on the former Desert Inn site and scheduled for a spring 2005 opening. The first Las Vegas mega-resort since the Aladdin opened in 2000, the Wynn Resort will feature 2,701 guest rooms, a spa with 45 treatment rooms, a championship golf course, and more than 200,000 square feet of meeting space, including the 50,197-square-foot Opal Ballroom.

Located next to the Las Vegas Convention Center and its 3.2 million square feet of exhibit space is the Las Vegas Hilton, with more than 200,000 square feet of meeting space and 3,174 recently refurbished guest rooms with both wireless and high-speed Internet access.