Shop till you drop

Byline: Tess Peaerson

Need another reason to attend Luxury Travel Expo, being held Dec. 2-4 at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas? Here’s one that’s near and dear to my heart: shopping!

Savvy shoppers know there’s more than one way to spend your dollars in Las Vegas, and after you “shop” for ideas on how to make money selling luxury travel at the Expo, you can head off for some retail therapy. A splurge at the gaming tables may sometimes leave you coming up short, but a spree at one of the city’s unique shopping venues means you’ll never go home empty-handed.

“We don’t have your typical shopping centers,” explains Art Jimenez, a sales executive with the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority and director of Shop Las Vegas. “Where else could you go shopping in Rome in the morning, have lunch in Venice followed by a gondola ride, and then take an afternoon break in the middle of a Moroccan thunderstorm?”

EXTRAORDINARY VENUES

Jimenez is referring to three of Las Vegas’ extraordinary shopping experiences–the Forum Shops at Caesars, the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian and Desert Passage at Aladdin. At all three, fun-filled entertainment surrounds an impressive array of high-end shops.

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The Forum Shops resembles an ancient Roman streetscape. In between shopping at more than 100 stores- including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, MAC Cosmetics, FAQ Schwarz, Emporio Armani and Ferragamo–you can enjoy two special-effects shows. At the Festival Fountain, the Roman gods come alive, while in the Atlantis Show the mythical sunken continent rises and falls before your eyes (in a 50,000-gallon saltwater aquarium). The Forum Shops’ blend of premium stores and Roman ambience has been so successful that a major expansion is slated to make its debut in the fall of 2004.

Yet another part of Italy can be experienced at the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian. Visitors can walk down cobblestone streets past replicas of Venetian landmarks to visit such shops as Brighton, Burberry, Dooney and Bourke, Davidoff and Jimmy Choo. The quarter-mile Grand Canal features it own fleet of gondolas with singing gondoliers, while in St. Mark’s Square–the centerpiece of the indoor mall–you can watch classically trained singers and actors perform.

Desert Passage, the newest mall on the Strip, resembles an exotic North African marketplace, with such dramatic scenery as a freighter anchored alongside a replica of a harbor. The more than 140 retailers boast such names as Club Monaco, Tommy Bahama, Build-a-Bear Workshop, Sur La Table and Clinique. Every half hour a rainstorm descends on Merchant’s Harbor with thunder and lightning.

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Without even leaving the Strip, you’ll find plenty of other places in which to hunt for treasures (in all, Las Vegas offers a whopping 20 million square feet of shopping). Via Bellagio at Bellagio features such high-end stores as Hermes, Giorgio Armani, Prada, Chanel, Tiffany & Co. and Fred Leighton. An array of French boutiques lines Le Boulevard at Paris Las Vegas. And at the Fashion Show, across from Steve Wynn’s planned Le Reve resort, you’ll find one of the largest shopping centers in the country. The mali is undergoing a significant expansion, and once a new Lord & Taylor opens in 2004, it will have eight anchor stores–more than any shopping attraction in America.

With many other options (including two outlet malls and another on the way), you can shop to your heart’s content, and, best of all, chalk it up to “research.” After all, the number-one reason travelers go to Las Vegas, according to Jimenez, is entertainment (not gaming, surprisingly). To keep that business booming, Shop Las Vegas will unveil four shopping packages later this year that wholesalers can add on to their packages.

Keeping business booming is what Luxury Travel Expo is all about. So bring an extra suitcase (you’ll need it after all that shopping!) and plan on joining me in Las Vegas in December.

Tess Pearson, SHOW DIRECTOR

tpearson@advanstar.com

RELATED ARTICLE: Luxury Travel Expo 2003

The Venetian, Las Vegas

Dec. 2-4, 2003

The world’s largest gathering of luxury travel professionals

For more information, call 888-480-3077 or visit [www.luxurytravelexpo.com].

Book your hotel room for only $89 a night. Call 877-283-6423 and quote “Luxury Travel Expo.”