KUALA LUMPUR, May 8 — Genting Bhd, Southeast Asia’s biggest gaming group, will begin construction of a US$4 billion (RM13 billion) gaming resort on the Las Vegas strip in the second half of this year, it said in a statement today.

The Resorts World Las Vegas, expected to create thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for South Nevada, would be built in four phases and take 24-36 months to complete, Genting said.

“Our themed resort will cater to the high-end visitor as well as the budget-minded tourist,” said Genting chairman Lim Kok Thay. “We will give first-time guests a new reason to visit Las Vegas and other tourists a great reason to return.”

Genting said when completed, the first phase alone would feature 3,500 gaming positions in a 100,000 square-foot gaming floor, dozens of villas, food outlets and retail stores, as well as open up 11,000 jobs.

In subsequent phases, the mega-gaming resort will add, among others, a water park, cinema, bowling alley and a million-square-foot convention centre.

Genting, which has held Malaysia’s sole casino licence since the 1960s, has focused its international expansion drive on the United States as the world’s largest economy starts to recover, and as various states relax restrictions ranging from casino licences to online gambling.

The group bought the Las Vegas resort in 2013 from Boyd Gaming Corp for US$350 million, in its first push into the US gambling mecca dominated by the likes of Las Vegas Sands.

Shares in Genting closed up 0.7 per cent at RM9.82 before the announcement, outperforming the broader market, which rose 0.1 per cent. — Reuters