Now is a great time to be travelling to Las Vegas.  The airlines have reduced their fares in an effort to increase the passenger levels which have been declining over the past year.  Hotels are offering fantastic reduced rates, some by as much 30% less than this time last year.  Many hotels are also offering gift certificates for massages and dining as added incentives. 

The trend is changing.  More and more gamblers are staying at home to gamble online than take a cruise and gamble offshore, particularly in the USA.  Until now cruise ship casinos were the answer for gamblers where land based casinos are illegal because offshore gambling is allowed once the ship is three miles out to sea.  It seems the online gambling business is putting the cruise lines out of business and they need to find new ways to bring in the passengers.

Spanish online bingo players can now play the game and join the chat rooms in their own language at JackpotCity.com .  90 ball Spanish-style online bingo games are now available and all new players will get a free €15 bonus when they sign up.

We all thought the problem of Kentucky state seizing 141 domain names was over when the Appellate Court ruled last week against Gov. Steve Beshear’s case.  It’s not.  Apparently the battle is still being fought.  Despite the ruling, Kentucky’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet have stated that the case will now be taken to the Kentucky Supreme court.  Will it ever end?

Despite just winning nearly $250,000 at the 2009 Aussie Millions Poker Championship, 19 year old American, Zachary Gruneberg, is still too young to realise his ultimate dream of playing poker in Las Vegas.  His father Craig Gruneberg was “overwhelmed with pride and shock” that his son had turned poker into a profitable activity.   Zachary says online poker is the only job he’s ever had.

An exciting event for online bingo operators and other related companies to look forward to is the 4th Annual Online Bingo Summit on 16-17 June at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel & Conference Centre in London.  Many top level representatives of the industry from sites such as Mecca Bingo, ValHala Investments, Foxy Bingo, Bingos.co.uk and many others will be speaking at this event.  Participants can save up to £300 by booking by 27th February.

The free online bingo site LiveBingo.com is fast becoming a household name in the UK.  They are now supporting the RSPCA in a campaign which will help people get their pets spayed, very important in this time of recession when it’s often difficult to even keep existing pets.  LiveBingo.com is offering £30 each to the first 100 Live Bingo members who present a recent invoice for the spaying of their pet.  Good idea.

The Chinese love playing online games that is.  A recent report from Interfax China states that in East Asia and China a total of $1.5 billion was made by online game operators in 2007.  This revenue is expected to rise to $1.86 billion in 2008 and it is further predicted that this amount could almost double by 2010.

In order to avoid the highly volatile situation that exists in the United States, the South African government will be regulating and taxing online gambling sites.  The Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, proposed a new bill to the government last week – the Interactive Gaming Tax Bill.  If the bill is passed it will “tax gross gambling revenue outside of operators within the online gambling industry.  Sites in or doing business in South Africa would be subject to a special tax”.

Everyone in the online gambling industry is hoping that the new Obama administration will see sense in the fact that online gambling will bring in substantial revenue to the ailing country.  As the chief of the American Gaming Association, Frank Fahrenkopf, said over the weekend “There have been projections circulated on the Hill that it can raise billions of dollars in new federal revenue, so we can expect that the whole issue of internet gambling will be front and center in the next Congress”.