We originally answered this question on 2/17/06, but we've gotten a handful of queries about it since (and this one recently), so here it is again.
Glenn Schaeffer, formerly the president of Mandalay Resort Group, is generally credited with introducing the term "megaresort" into the casino lexicon in the early 1990s. The term "mega" in Greek means "huge"; thus, megaresort describes a giant hotel-casino with thousands of rooms, dozens of eateries, several entertainment venues, and extensive retail operations all under a single roof.
When MGM Mirage announced its intention to build the 66-acre CityCenter at center Strip, with a 4,000-room hotel-casino, three 400-room boutique hotels, 1,625 residential units, and a half-million square feet of retail, dining and entertainment space, this was no longer a mere megaresort. Pundits variously labeled it an urban village, a mixed-use urban development, and a city within a city.
Unlike the term megaresort, which was quickly adopted by the industry, the above descriptions didn't nail this new concept in the evolution of resort-casinos. So we at the >Las Vegas Advisor coined the term "metaresort." In Greek, "meta" means "beyond." So a metaresort is, literally, beyond a resort and even a megaresort: It's a collection of resorts on a large piece of property owned by a single company.
