The common view of Las Vegas is that it is here for the gambling. In fact the town was a watering hole in the desert, then a train stop and then a construction headquarters for the building of the Hoover Dam in the 1920’s. Gambling was licensed in 1931, the casino hotels following soon after. In 1941 El Rancho Vegas opened with 63 rooms, followed by the Last Frontier and then the Flamingo. In the 1960’s the first mega hotel opened, the International (now the Hilton) with 1,512 rooms becoming the largest hotel in the world. Today the Venetian, which opened in 1999, and the Palazzo (opened January 2008) make up the largest hotel and resort complex in the world, with over 7,128 rooms over half of which are suites. Still they build with more suites (another thousand or so) under construction, and this continual renewal and extension seems to be a characteristic of the industry here.

Adjacent to the Palazzo is the 215 acre site of the Wynn (see a forthcoming Review) where the current construction of a second tower, called ‘Encore’ is due for completion in December, adding over 2,000 rooms and suites and bringing this hotel up to 4,700 rooms. Huge shopping malls interconnect to provide air-conditioned shopping for everything from Ferrari’s or Lamborghini’s to the USA's only Rolex store, high fashion and low brow souvenirs. Galleries are not just commercial – the Guggenheim is here and during my stay the Bellagio hosted a show on modern American painting from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Rolled together then are mega-casino’s, mega shopping experiences, major pool complexes, Michelin starred restaurants (the city seems to have more ‘named’ chefs in a small area than anywhere I have been) theatres and cinemas (the Luxor boasted an I-Max), shows (Cirque du Soleil have a purpose build home here, and Excalibur has jousting tournaments in an indoor arena), concerts (Cher and other stars are on long term contracts here) all providing a genuine, bafflingly successful (92% occupancy averaged so far in 2008), resort environment.

Is this what Victorian Britons created at Blackpool in the 1850’s? They had the ambition, vision and drive together with the engineering skills to create the railway resorts which were then breathtaking in their size – just as Las Vegas is now.

"the 7% casino tax and an 8% bed tax means that there are no local income taxes or company taxes, and the growth has been matched by public spending that has seen City build a new primary school every four weeks"

Here the vision is 21st century and no-one typifies it more than the MGM Mirage team. Having just added a ‘boutique tower’ to Mandalay Bay which opened at teh end of 2003, called THE hotel, they are in the middle of an $8.2billion dollar 67 acre CityCenter development between the Bellagio (which they own) and Monte Carlo (ditto) which will contain ARIA, a resort Casino designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli architects, containing 4,004 guestrooms and 568 suites. In addition there will be a 1,800 seater theatre, four pools, a variety of restaurants and conferencing for 5,000 delegates – well the statistics roll on like numbers in a slot machine (oh yes it will have a casino of course). There will be two condo hotels in the complex for a four hotel total.

For many years, Las Vegas has been the fastest growing city in the USA. It shows no sign of slowing down, and the 7% casino tax and an 8% bed tax means that there are no local income taxes or company taxes and the growth has been matched by public spending that has seen the City build a new primary school every four weeks. Hotels are know as engines of regeneration (the Wynn reckons on about three employees per room meaning the Venetian must employ around 20,000 souls). It may have been the legalisation of gambling that started this wheel of fortune turning for Las Vegas but this resort City transcends the gambling now.

Could a mega resort and hotel development do the same in the UK? Could local taxes and business rates be replaced by a levy on the roulette wheel or a bed tax? Now there is something for Blackpool to contemplate…