While the notion of traveling to Las Vegas for a major cultural event historically known as a time for family gatherings may seem sacrilegious, David Huang, whose tour company, Chinese Hosts, is based here, said the trend reflected a newfound desire among younger, upwardly mobile Asians and Asian-Americans to travel while maintaining an important tradition of the holiday: gambling. (来源：www.EnglishCN.com)

“The Chinese New Year has always been a time for people to get together and play games, to celebrate good luck and good fortune,” Mr. Huang said. “People like to get together and spend substantial amounts of money. Vegas helps keep up the tradition.”

Las Vegas’s ties to Asia have grown more extensive over the last decade with MGM Mirage, Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts all spending billions on lavish hotel-casinos in the Chinese region of Macau. In 2004, Nevada opened a tourism office in Beijing. And both the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Community College of Southern Nevada have or are building satellite campuses in China and Singapore.

“Growing up in Las Vegas, we never heard about Chinese New Year,” said Bo J. Bernhard, a sociology professor at U.N.L.V. and director of gambling research at the university’s International Gaming Institute. “There might’ve been a nod here or there and a casino host who focused on high rollers 10 years ago. But now the casino industry is being exposed to Asia in a big way, and Asia has been exposed to our casino industry, too.”

The importance of Chinese New Year to the casino industry is clear by the lengths to which properties go to court Asian gamblers during the holiday. This year’s Chinese New Year began on the Presidents’ Day weekend, typically a busy time for the city, which was also the site of the NBA All-Star Game and one of the year’s biggest conventions, the men’s apparel trade show. But Mr. Weidner said his company’s top priority was its clients, some of whom the company ferried here from Asia on its fleet of private jets.

“This is a merit system here,” Mr. Weidner said. “The highest quality players will get whatever they want. The Chinese are the highest and best quality players in the world, so they’ll have preference. We don’t care how tall you are, how short you are, how fat you are, what color you are. Green is the most important color.”