There are more hotel rooms in Las Vegas than there are in London. This city of 2 million people is the fastest growing city in the USA. With over 39 million tourists a year arriving here, and a growth in overseas visitors of 9% in the first quarter of 2008, it is easy to become hypnotised by the statistics. For example 67,000 of the room total are contained in just 15 hotels. The statistics spew out as if they are silver coins dropping into the winner’s tray on some giant slot machine.

Huge though the numbers are, and the hotels generate enough in taxes for the State to charge no income tax, it is not the statistics that are worth marvelling at. No, the wonder here is that these huge hotels, with up to 7,000 rooms and 20,000 employees in just one of the behemoths alone, are able to manage their hospitality operation and their interiors without losing a sense of style throughout. There are some awful hotels here, some really tacky ones too, but the recent visit and award of no less than 16 Michelin stars to restaurants in the hotels (one receiving three stars) shows the real quality that is here too.

The Wynn was built by the eponymous Steve Wynn, who in an earlier incarnation as the head of the MGM Mirage Corporation was also responsible for developing Bellagio and others. Built on the site of the original Desert Sands Hotel it is indeed a behemoth, currently with 2,716 rooms and with another 2,034 being added in a second resort tower called, suitably, Encore. The delight of the Wynn however is not the scale or the number of rooms; it is the quality of the design. To an eye starved of colour in a European hotels landscape dominated by so-called ‘good taste’ that has led to bleak minimalist interiors in cream and white, or colour schemes that echo old UK railway colours of maroon and cream, the riot of colour resulting from both the bold colour schemes and the imaginative use of planting are a delight to the eye – like an oasis in the desert.

From the outside the sense of style is strong. The two towers stand at one end of the strip their streamlined bronze and cream lines making even Trump’s tower with is 24 carat gold leaf applied to the outside, look dull by comparison, except when Trump is hit by the rising sun when the gold flares and reflects light that diminishes the twenty foot video billboards of the Strip to pallid near-invisibility.

The hotel is hidden from the strip by a 140 high man made 'mountain' from which waterfalls tumble into a small lake, artfully placed to give a water theatre to the hotel bars in the evenings. The hotel doesn’t turn its back on the strip but it encourages visitors to enter to take part in the theatre of the hospitality experience within. The promise of the exterior quality is fulfilled with high quality interiors. Some European aesthetes might say that these are vulgar interiors, but the scale of the spaces demands a treatment that is strong enough to give a sense of place. Here strong colour and decoration are used, continuing a tradition that stretches through Art Deco and Art Nouveau (epitomised by the competing THEhotel or to the Victorians’ arts and crafts movement (seen authentically inthe Noma in Promnice Poland), encompassing Klimt and the Secessionist movement along the way.

Some European chains have tried to use colour but have just made their hotels dark. Here light is used theatrically to supplement the use of decoration through plasterwork, wall coverings and carpets to create brilliant jewel boxes of interiors. No trick is missed – upholstered ceilings, inset carpets contrasted against marble, strong colour walls stopping corridor ends and contrasting brilliantly with large flower arrangements all given counterpoint by idiosyncratic furniture or tricks of lighting. Yes it is visually busy, and yes the colour handling is full blooded, but the result is to create comfortable yet dramatic spaces that welcome and do not discomfort or diminish the people in them. All combine so that the colour and drama of the gambling floors cease to be an overwhelming experience, sitting as just one experience in a number of equal experiences. The overall aim is to make the visitor feel that the resort is the destination and that gambling, once the primary attraction, is now just another of a number of equally attractive attractions.