Can Celine Dion save recession-hit Las Vegas?

It looks like Las Vegas is counting on Celine Dion's star power to help it drag out of the recession once and for all.
 
The French-Canadian singer has been dubbed a 'messiah' and the debut of her new show at Caesar's Palace last week treated with all the reverence of the Second Coming for the extraordinary scale of prosperity it promises to restore to the troubled strip, reports the Telegraph.
 
"She's been called a 'one-woman economic stimulus package' and I think there's a lot of truth to that. People will come to the city just for her and they will spend money and as a consequence, she has an outsized impact on the economy," said Stephen Brown, director of the Centre for Business and Economic Research in Las Vegas.
 
"And 'bigger than Elvis, Sinatra and Liberace put together?' Definitely," he added.
 
He estimates that Dion's show will create up to 7,000 indirect jobs and around $114 million worth of new economic activity in each of the three years for which she has been contracted.
 
Box office takings are over $10 million already for the first month's worth of shows alone.
 
During her last run in Las Vegas, from 2003 to 2007, every last ticket of every show sold out, accumulating gross profits of $400 million and reaching a total audience of three million.

Caesar has built a $95 million, 4,000-seat auditorium especially for her, complete with dazzling stage wizardry and a dehumidifying system to protect her voice from the dry desert heat.
 
By coincidence, she departed Caesar's in 2007 just before the city's economy collapsed, and is returning to it just as some believe it is poised for potential recovery.
 
Dion, 42, is the best-selling female artist of all time - hits include the Oscar-winning theme songs from the films Titanic and Beauty and the Beast.
 
She has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, won more than 1,000 awards and enjoys a deeply loyal fan base.
 
Few people are under any illusions that Las Vegas can be single-handedly salvaged by one woman and a microphone.
 
Economists and business leaders are convinced that Dion will be a formidable factor in the city's financial rejuvenation. Tourism, for example, is expected to rise by 3.1% in 2011 - equating to around one million more visitors - with her comeback accounting for a significant part of the surge.
 
Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, who professed to be the "world's happiest mayor" even in the thick of Sin City's financial woes, said that his smile has been stretched a little further by Dion's return.
 
Dion, who is expected to work the Midas Touch on Las Vegas and reaping a $500,000 pay packet per show, however, claims not to believe in her own powers of financial influence.
 
"I want people to come and not feel disappointed. That's my most important job. I personally don't think I have anything to do with the economy," she said.