Adelson hopes to rent suites at average daily rate of $167

John Wilen

Tuesday, May 4, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

It's an understatement to say Sheldon Adelson is proud of the Venetian's hotel rooms.

To Adelson, the massive resort's 3,000 rooms are one of its central components.

Adelson believes the Venetian's rooms are superior to the rooms offered anywhere else in town. The rooms, he says, will sell the resort.

"Take a look at the room," said Adelson during a Venetian tour earlier this year. "Our room is substantially superior to any other room in town."

All Venetian rooms are divided into separate living and sleeping areas by three steps and a wrought-iron fence. All rooms have two 27-inch televisions, a wet bar, plush furniture and fixtures, and a safe large enough for a laptop computer. In keeping with the Adelson's plan to fill a significant number of rooms with conventioneers, each Venetian room will include a fax machine with a separate dedicated data line for computers.

Securities and Exchange Commission filings by the Venetian last year state that the hotel expects to command an average daily room rate (ADR) of $167. Compared to ADR's of less than $100 at most other resorts in town, that is high.

"I know for Las Vegas that's high," Adelson said earlier this year. "But we're not competing with Las Vegas, necessarily. We're competing with the rest of the country."

The Venetian's business model assumes the resort's vast attached convention and meeting space -- 1.65 million square feet -- will attract enough people to fill its rooms. According to Adelson, conventioneers will gladly pay as much as $229 a night for a basic Venetian room.

For competition, the Venetian has Bellagio, with basic room rates running from $129 to $299 a night, and the high-end Four Seasons Hotel atop the Mandalay Bay, which charges a minimum of $250 a night. There are also less expensive basic rooms up and down the Strip, but Adelson thinks the Venetian rooms will sell themselves.

"People will pay for this room," Adelson said. "People will say, 'I'm on the company account.' "