From the casino floor gamblers can glimpse a Ferrari Enzo, in Satanic black, parked like temptation itself on a revolving pedestal in the Italian car dealership’s window. The car is worth $670,000; only 349 were built. Welcome to Sin City’s latest “megahotel” — the $2.7 billion, 2,700-room Wynn Las Vegas. The hotel, built as an act of corporate revenge by the 63-year-old billionaire Steve Wynn — after losing his Mirage Resorts casino empire to the corporate raider Kirk Kerkorian — opened its doors at 12.01am today amid the euphoria usually seen at Billy Graham rallies.

In a typically competitive gesture, Mr Wynn celebrated the opening by making job offers to 2,000 employees of Mr Kerkorian’s MGM Mirage company, which is in the middle of a merger with Mandalay Resort Group.

“There is nobody in the world who creates such entertaining and beautiful casinos,” said Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Altantic, who was a guest at the charity ball hosted by Mr Wynn and his wife, Elaine, to mark the grand opening. “I would say every other casino must be nervous. He’s lifted the bar dramatically.”

Before the public was allowed into the flower-strewn lobby, The Times was given a private tour of an hotel that is almost a country in its own right, featuring a 140ft man-made “mountain”, a three-acre lake, a forest of 1,500 pine trees and two waterfalls thundering down a fake rock face from heights of up to 100ft.

The Wynn is the first hotel to be built in the modern era of Las Vegas in which the city makes more money from technology conferences, fine dining, weddings and spa services than it does from Midwestern tourists putting their pay cheques on red.

In fact, most of Las Vegas’s business now comes from the glamorous people of Los Angeles, who either drive there or take a 45-minute flight. As a result, the Wynn is the first hotel-resort in Las Vegas history where the casino is not centre stage. As well as its luxurious rooms, the bronze-coloured, subtly curved hotel tower has a shopping outlet, multiple swimming pools, a domed theatre, a conference centre, a health spa, a wedding chapel and an art gallery. It also has the only golf course on the strip.

In television advertisements for the hotel, Mr Wynn was pictured standing on its roof, above his giant neon-lit signature, assuring Americans that “it’s the only one I’ve ever signed my name to”.

Mr Wynn, who is losing his sight to the genetic disease retinitis pigmentosa, has already started his next project — Encore, an adjacent $1.4 billion hotel and casino, which is scheduled to open in 2008. Combined, the Wynn and Encore will have cost more money to build than any other resort in history.

The billionaire’s career began when he inherited a bingo parlour from his father. He made enough money from it to buy a stake in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in 1967. Then came a deal with Howard Hughes, the reclusive aviation pioneer, to take control of the Golden Nugget, with hugely successful results.

With the profits, he built The Mirage, which helped to turn Las Vegas into the upscale tourist destination of today, following it with The Bellagio, which features an artificial lake and ‘water show’, which can be viewed from Las Vegas Boulevard.

Mr Wynn thought this was a mistake. With his new hotel, he obstructed the public’s view with a fake mountain to ensure that only paying guests could enjoy its multimedia light and water show.

Although investment analysts estimate that the Wynn hotel will take away as much as $75 million in annual cashflow from MGM, some wonder whether such lavish spending can be turned into substantial profits. Shares in Mr Wynn’s company, however, have already risen nearly fivefold since they joined the Nasdaq stock market three years ago, putting a $1.35 billion value on his 25 per cent stake.

Mr Wynn, it seems, has already won.

From Mormon to Mammon

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