Wynn Palace Opens in Cotai With a Lake of Fountains

Wynn Palace opened in Cotai on 22 August 2016, the second Macau resort of Wynn Resorts and, at a reported cost of US$4.2 billion, one of the most expensive hotels ever built. It has 1,706 rooms, suites and villas in a 28-storey tower that curves around an artificial lake.

That lake is the resort’s signature. The Performance Lake covers eight acres, and its fountains, with more than a thousand jets, are choreographed to music through the day and evening. Most guests do not arrive through a conventional entrance but by SkyCab, an air-conditioned gondola that leaves from the roadside, rises more than 90 feet above the water and circles the lake before setting passengers down inside the building.

Inside, the tone is set by flowers and art. Two moving floral sculptures by the designer Preston Bailey, a carousel and a Ferris wheel, are each made of more than 100,000 flowers. The art collection, assembled over six years and valued at more than US$125 million, includes a set of rare Qing-dynasty porcelain vases. An 18th-century crystal chandelier hangs in the Wing Lei Bar.

The restaurants at opening included Wing Lei Palace, a Cantonese dining room facing the lake, and SW Steakhouse. The spa, with 22 treatment rooms, was presented as the largest in Macau, and a shopping esplanade of about 18,500 square metres brought together more than 50 luxury names.

Steve Wynn, then chairman of the company, called it arguably the most beautiful hotel in the world. The claim was characteristically bold, but the opening did mark a turn in the development of Cotai, where new resorts were being designed around spectacle, dining and hotel rooms rather than around the casino floor alone. It was followed by Morpheus in 2018 and Grand Lisboa Palace in 2021.

OKYTO’s page on Wynn Palace covers the stay, and our Macau guide places it among the city’s other hotels.