NEWS & NOTES

Caesars Entertainment announced that a renovation of the 1,181 rooms and suites of the Palace Tower at Caesars Palace is complete. The $100 million project includes 10 new themed luxury villas that top out at 4,085 square feet and feature private elevators, 85-inch TVs, hand-painted murals, whirlpools and steam showers and gold-plated faucets. Rates per night start at $3,100.   •  Excalibur Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip is readying the debut of an entertainment attraction it calls Ultimate 4-D Experience. Produced in partnership with virtual reality developer SimEx-Iwerks Entertainment, it will feature three daily multi-sensory shows.  •  Caesars Entertainment has begun charging Nevada residents to park at seven of its Las Vegas Strip resorts: Caesars Palace, Paris Las Vegas, Bally’s, The Cromwell, Flamingo, The Linq Hotel and Harrah’s. Parking will remain free at the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood and at the off-Strip Rio and for Total Rewards cardholders rated “Platinum” and above.  •  Tao Asian Bistro, located in the Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip, has been ranked the highest-grossing independent restaurant in the U.S. by Restaurant Business magazine for the fourth year running. One of the signature eateries of the 17 owned by the Tao Group, the outlet served more than 226,000 meals in 2016 at an average price of $90, taking in more than $42 million.  •  The chairman of slot manufacturer Ainsworth Game Technology stated in the firm’s annual report that the acquisition of the majority stake in the Australian-based supplier by Austria’s Novomatic AG will be complete by the end of the year. “The regulatory approval process for the sale of shares to Novomatic AG is progressing well,” Ainsworth Chairman Graeme Campbell said in the report. “We expect completion to occur before the end of this calendar year… We look forward to welcoming Novomatic to Ainsworth as the new majority shareholder. We will continue to seek to explore and deliver synergy benefits from this strategic relationship.”  •  This week the Mega Millions lottery now costs $2 a ticket, double from what it was up until October 27. Tickets that were sold for $1 are no longer valid. Players will also have a completely different pool of numbers to choose from. They will choose five numbers from 1-70, and a single number from 1-25. In the old game, they chose between 1-75 and 1-15 respectively. Because of the changes jackpots will begin at $40 million instead of $15 million, and reach larger amounts faster. The changes were approved in April by the New York Gaming Commission. Mega Millions is played in 44 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.   •   Macau’s six casino operators will introduce electric shuttle bus services for customers.A trial of the new shuttle buses will be held on the Cotai Connection route, which links only properties located around the Cotai Strip. No start date was announced.  ?  The first four trains of Macau’s new Light Rail Transit fleet has arrived from Japan.The light rail system will connect IRs on the Cotai Strip.  ?  The number of visitors to Macau travelling on package tours rose 25.6 percent year-on-year to 760,000 in September, for a month-to-month increase of 8.9 percent, reports the Statistics and Census Service. Group visitors from Mainland China, Korea and Taiwan were up year-on-year by 32.4 percent, 10.8 percent and 2.4 percent respectively. Tourists from Japan and Hong Kong dropped 7.1 percent and 21.1 percent.