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Writer's pictureILICarrieDoll

Macau, the Las Vegas of Asia (May 2018)

Updated: Jan 15, 2021

My company Pentajeu had been attending G2E Asia yearly and will send a small team to observe the event. This year however, we finally confident enough to have open booth to promote our company and our latest products. After years working with them, I was finally selected to go to Macau to both observe the event and taking care art quality control.



Regarding where I will be staying

The Cotai Strip is a term coined by Las Vegas Sands Corporation with regard to its building of a strip of hotel-casinos in the Cotai section of Macau, a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. Cotai was the result of a major land reclamation project which joined the two islands of Coloane and Taipa, and is part of the Macau government's continuous efforts to expand the region's territory. The reclaimed land in Cotai is to be mainly used for casino developments and Las Vegas Sands Corporation envisioned that their development of several adjacent properties would comprise an area that would resemble the Las Vegas Strip, albeit on a considerably smaller scale. Over the past decade, the layout of the Cotai Strip has also slowly developed into a grid like layout with major hotels and casinos (Wynn Palace, MGM Cotai and Galaxy Macau) built not directly connected to the 'strip' as opposed to Las Vegas strip with the majority of major hotels and casinos with front access to the Las Vegas strip.



Holiday Inn

To be honest I wasn't expecting we going to stay in 4-stars hotel, consider we will be here for 5 days! 😱 I was really expecting we might just stay at budget hotel.



The Sand Cotai

Located next (and connected) with Holiday Inn, The Sand also connected to Four Season through bridge, and from Four Seasons it connected into The Venetian.


With these connections, I can avoid the rain or the summer heat as I venture back and forth from the hotel to the G2E event location.



G2E Asia 2018 (Global Gaming Expo)

G2E 2018 held inside The Venetian Macau Conventional Center. We arrived 2 days before the event started to prepare our booth and run test to all the machines.

Specifically targeting the growing Asian gaming industry, the annual Global Gaming Expo Asia (G2E Asia) is, like its larger American counterpart, presented by the American Gaming Association and organized by Reed Exhibitions.

In 2006, the same year Macau's gambling industry surpassed that of Las Vegas in gross gaming revenues, Global Gaming Expo acquired the Asian Gaming Expo from the Australasian Gaming Machine Manufacturers Association, and announced that it would rebrand the annual event as G2E Asia.

While I am expecting not to recognized most of the companies, I was surprised to find Konami! I know Konami recently is into panchiko machines, but I didn't expect they would go for conventional slot machines and would be promoting internationally.



The Venetian

The Venetian exterior and interior is amazing! As the name implied, the whole place uses Venice, Italy, as its design inspiration and features architectural replicas of various Venetian landmarks, and I guess this is the closest I can get to Europe (haha 😭)

The Venetian Macao (Chinese: 澳門威尼斯人) is a luxury hotel and casino resort in Macau owned by the American Las Vegas Sands company. The Venetian is a 39-story, casino hotel on the Cotai Strip in Macau. The 10,500,000-square-foot (980,000 m2) Venetian Macao is modeled on its sister casino resort The Venetian Las Vegas. The Venetian Macao is the largest casino in the world, the largest single structure hotel building in Asia, and also the seventh-largest building in the world by floor area.



The Parisian

Located next to The Venetian, and again, as the name implied, the whole place uses Paris, France, as its design inspiration and features architectural replicas of various Venetian landmarks. Every corner inside the hotel and mall are various French street performers.

The Parisian Macao (Chinese: 澳門巴黎人) is a luxury hotel in Cotai, Macau, China owned by Las Vegas Sands, which has a half-scale Eiffel Tower as one its landmarks. It was originally expected to be operational in late 2015, with that later changed to August 2016. The hotel officially opened on 13 September 2016.



The Parisian Performers

As I mentioned earlier, in The Parisian, every corner inside the hotel and mall are various French street performers. Everyday they have performance at the center at noon.




Four Seasons

Four seasons served as the (literal) main connections to all The Cotai Strips buildings; starting from The Sands (which itself connected with Holiday Inn and Sheraton), then divert into The Venetian on the right side and The Parisian on the left side.



The Wynn Palace

We passed the Wynn Palace in order to take the bus to the old Macau town. On the last day in Macau I woke extra early to visit several places, The Wynn Palace, The Galaxy and MGM. The Skycab however delayed until 11am and I was almost panic, thinking I might missed the opportunity to ride it (I managed to btw).

Wynn Palace (Chinese: 永利皇宮) is the second luxury integrated resort from international resort developer Wynn Resorts in the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, following the launch of Wynn Macau. Located in the Cotai Strip area, it features a 28-story hotel with 1,706 exquisitely furnished rooms, suites and villas, versatile meeting facilities, over 106,000 square feet (9,800 m2) of luxury retail, 11 casual and fine dining restaurants, Macau's largest spa, a salon, a pool and approximately 420,000 square feet (39,000 m2) of casino space



The Galaxy

Galaxy Macau (Chinese: 澳門銀河綜合渡假城) is a casino resort located on the Cotai Strip, Macau, China. Construction on the Cotai project began in 2002.

Its opening was rescheduled several times. Its developer, Galaxy Entertainment Group, announced on 10 March 2011 that the HKD 14.9 billion (US$1.9 billion) resort would officially open on 15 May 2011. The resort is designed by Gary Goddard. The resort consists of six different hotels, each with its own 'theme', Galaxy Macau, Broadway Macau, Banyan Tree, Hotel Okura, The Ritz Carlton and JW Marriott.

Too bad I was alone, couldn't do cooler poses with most of them.



Macau Old Town

After crossing the bridge that linked between the Cotai Strips and the old Macau Town, I felt like I was transported into another country. Here I can see older buildings, mainly of Portuguese structures left behind after their colonization.



Macau New Town

The next day we went to another side of Macau, but this time is within the walking distance from Cotai Strip. I accidentally eat pork btw.....(LONG STORY).


Overall I didn't really consider this as a holiday as this is a business trip and I'm more busy running errands. But I still feel lucky we make use all the extra times to do small explorations - tho none of us have the time to enjoy the swimming pool 😂



Last group photo after the closing of G2E.

The conclusion of G2E Asia 2018.

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