Lads will get chance to take it to the max in Las Vegas

NEW YORK - It is the ultimate macho male's fantasy. Your own casino, offering high-stakes gaming and sophisticated nightlife, all served up by scantily clad croupiers and bar staff.

Maxim, the lads' mag that had its humble beginnings in Britain a decade ago, is about to make it big in Las Vegas, with plans to build a luxury Maxim Hotel and Casino complex at the heart of the world's gambling capital.

The magazine is promising to offer its trademark diet of girls, girls and more girls on the Strip, Vegas's world-famous thoroughfare, where casinos vie to outdo each other in the sumptuousness of their surroundings.

Maxim's parent company, the London-based Dennis Publishing, said the 3.6ha complex would have 2300 hotel rooms and a large casino, and the best swimming pools on the Strip.

Expect busloads of the magazine's "Hometown Hotties" to hit Vegas for the opening, pencilled in for 2010. Do not, however, expect the typical lavish Vegas design for the hotel.

Maxim says it has ruled out a 30-metre bronze statue of a female model as the establishment's icon; it is working instead on designs that evoke the "upscale", "cool" and the "modern".

Maxim is also emphasising its female readership, which, it says, accounts for 3 million out of 13 million in the US. The hotel will have spas and shops for her.

"We are not trying to build a giant frat house," says Barry Pincus, director of brand development at Maxim.

The developers, Concord Wilshire, are believed to have paid Maxim about US$5 million for use of the magazine brand.

MAXIMUM FUN

Maxim was in the first wave of lads' mags in Britain when it opened in 1995. It aims at the high-income, high-spending 18-35 male.

It publishes 31 international editions, including two in the US.

Women readers account for 3 million out of 13 million in the US.

- INDEPENDENT