The Venetian opened in May 1999 on the site of the former Sands hotel. Its canals and Italian landmarks announce one part of the story; the convention centre explains another. Sheldon Adelson bought the Sands in 1989, and the adjacent Sands Expo opened in 1990, before the old hotel was demolished in 1996. The Venetian brought a new hotel, restaurants, shopping and entertainment into that business-travel setting. This sequence matters: the convention business was already established before the Venice-themed resort arrived.
A new resort on the Sands site
The old Sands and today's Venetian share a site history, but the Venetian is a replacement resort rather than a renamed surviving Sands hotel. Las Vegas Sands' retrospective dates the opening festivities to May 3, 1999; contemporary reporting and company financial material also use May 4. May 1999 is the common ground, and the date field here deliberately preserves that month-level precision.
Why Venice?
The resort's own origin account connects its Venetian theme to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson's honeymoon in Venice. That is the operator's explanation of the inspiration, not evidence that the Las Vegas buildings are historical Venetian structures.
Italian craftsmanship in a Las Vegas setting
The architecture rewards attention to materials as well as silhouettes. The resort describes Italian artists painting its ceiling frescoes, solid Botticino-marble columns in the main colonnade and a fitted marble floor patterned after the Church of Santa Maria del Rosario. These are modern acts of copying and craftsmanship: the interest lies in how a new Las Vegas resort translated a distant city into an immersive hotel and shopping environment.
Business travellers and leisure visitors
The canals, colonnades and meeting spaces also reveal two audiences being served together. A visitor might encounter the property as a theatrical version of Venice; a convention delegate might use it as an interconnected place to work, sleep, eat and spend an evening. Las Vegas Sands' history explicitly presents the combination of business and leisure as its integrated-resort model. Later expansion joined The Palazzo to the wider complex.
The 2022 sale
A further change came on February 23, 2022, when Las Vegas Sands completed the sale of The Venetian, Palazzo and Venetian Expo to Apollo and VICI affiliates. The transaction separated the operating business from the real estate: Apollo-affiliated funds acquired the operations while VICI acquired the land and real-estate assets. The familiar resort name continued through that ownership change. A useful history therefore keeps three things apart: the lost Sands hotel, the 1999 Venetian development, and the larger resort and convention business operating under the Venetian name today.