Place your bets in Macau

I am sitting on a distressed couch dressed in a terry cloth bathrobe with my feet in a clay basin of warm water on a wood and undressed-stone floor. The lights are dim. Music plays gently in the background. The air is rich with the scent of blended herbs. I can't help but relax, though it's hard to believe I'm doing so in Macau, once the poor relation of its richer, more sophisticated neighbor, Hong Kong.

This spa experience took place at the Crown Macau, one of the new, super-luxury hotels that have put Macau on a par with Hong Kong and Singapore for those who want to be pampered.

The growth in Macau's hospitality industry has been meteoric and a tourist boom has kept pace with it. In 2000, there were just under 10 million tourists to the area, last year there were 27 million, according to Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) figures.

While the luxury at the Crown, designed by Peter Remedios (the man behind the look of the Four Seasons New York and Hong Kong's Landmark Oriental) is accessible to tourists with a healthy bank account, it's high-rolling gamblers who keep the business going. For example, playing in the super VIP gambling area at the Crown requires access to NT$1 million.

Naturally, some amenities cater to big spenders. Other services, like an NT$7,000 spa treatment, are treats accessible to more mainstream visitors.

All of the Crown's rooms look across the water from Taipa Island to the peninsula of Macau proper. "We don't want anyone to have anything less than the best view," said Crown Macau PR manager Charles Ngai. When he talks of six-star service, it's not just sales hype.

The Crown is not alone in offering high-end vacation spots. The MGM Grand Macau opened last month, Wynn Macau opened two years ago and has just finished its second-phase extension. Grand Lisboa's casino is up and running, and the hotel is scheduled to open later this year. On the Cotai Strip, a piece of reclaimed land that links Coloane and Taipa islands, Four Seasons is building a luxury hotel, and Crown has already started work on another, to be called City of Dreams. The list goes on: Sheraton, the Hilton, Fairmont, Raffles and Shangri-La hotels are all in development. According to the MGTO, 26 major hotel developments are currently underway.

Getting into these rooms, though, isn't always easy, especially around holidays. At the 216-room Crown Towers, rooms are often pre-booked by big-time out-of-town gamblers.

Though people from all over the world visit Macau, the bulk of business comes from China. Business is seldom slow and nowhere can this be seen more clearly than at The Venetian, owned by the Las Vegas Sands Corp. Blue hotel buses bring in a continuous stream of visitors. The check-in area resembles an airport after all flights have been canceled. With 3,000 rooms and a gambling hall larger than five football fields, 800 tables and 6,000 slot machines, there is plenty for everyone.

The Venetian, with its theme-park design, might be sneered at by sophisticates, but is a thrill for families. You can take a gondola ride in a canal, with a real Italian gondolier (who can sing), in an ersatz gondola (they're motorized).

Although the hotel, casino and convention center opened last year and is new enough that you can still smell the glue used to hold the paneling in place, it has already played host to Manchester United players, who played in Macau in July, and Pete Sampras and Roger Federer when they played an exhibition tennis match in November. This is besides, of course, regular business conferences.