A museum dedicated to the history of organised crime is to open in Las Vegas as the city continues to develop its downtown area.
The Mob Museum will open on Valentine’s Day – February 14, 2012 – and will join other new downtown attractions including the Smith Centre for the Performing Arts.
Other new openings in the pipeline include the Link Project – an observation wheel which will be 100ft taller than the London Eye and is due to open in 2013.
The developments come as Las Vegas reported a 5% year-on-year increase in visitors in the first nine months of 2011, including a 16.2% increase from the UK to 385,000 on the back of the recently introduced twice-weekly Virgin Atlantic flights from Manchester.
Rossi Ralenkotter, chief executive of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said: “We are making improvements to infrastructure, including a new terminal at McCarran International Airport, and with increases in visitor counts over the past 18 months we are leading the Las Vegas economy out of recession.”
Carolyn Goodman, mayor of Las Vegas, added: “We are continually re-inventing ourselves as a destination and giving visitors a reason to come to Las Vegas. We are seeing direct flights from the UK arriving full, which shows that there is a real appetite to visit.”