Most Chinese restaurants on the Strip stay open longer and add traditional New Year’s dishes or rename some regular ones with lucky or upbeat words. It is not unusual for a family to spend more than $20,000 for a Chinese New Year dinner, said Richard Chen, the executive chef at the Wing Lei restaurant in the Wynn Las Vegas resort, which has imported abalone at $2,226 a pound and bird’s nest at $1,600 a pound for this year’s festivities.

Image Chinese New Year is one of the most profitable times of the year for Las Vegas casinos like the Venetian, which featured a dragon dance Saturday. Credit... Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

At the Bellagio, the theme of the 14,000-square-foot Conservatory is changed only five times a year, and Chinese New Year is one of those times. The current display features live tangerine trees, a 45-foot-tall pagoda, and a mechanical pig with a moving eyes, tail and snout.

“You’ll see a lot of Chinese lanterns hanging in groups of six because multiples of six are lucky numbers,” said the Conservatory manager, Sharon Hatcher. “Everything here are multiples of six or eight, because those are the lucky numbers. Even the number of koi we have in our pond are multiples of eight. We want to maintain as much positive energy for luck.”

Such nods to Asian culture came as hard-learned lessons for Las Vegas properties, which now employ feng shui masters to advise on design and building plans. When the MGM Grand HotelsCasino opened in 1993, patrons walked through a main entrance built to resemble the mouth of a mammoth lion, MGM’s longtime corporate symbol. This incensed Asian gamblers, who complained — and stayed away — because the notion of walking into the mouth of a beast is considered unlucky. The company spent millions removing the lion and reconfiguring the entrance, said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage.

“Everyone has stories about things like that,” Mr. Feldman said. “Over at the Mirage we built a high-limit gaming area that looked like a library. The Chinese word for book sounds like lose so books have an unlucky connotation. Those books were gone within the hour.”

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.

“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.”