Avani Victoria Falls Resort Casino

Avani Victoria Falls Resort is the Zambia side's flagship hotel-casino complex, positioned within Livingstone's tourism corridor — the town named directly after the Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone, who reached the falls in November 1855 and named them in honour of Queen Victoria (the Tonga name, Mosi-oa-Tunya — "the smoke that thunders" — long predates European contact). The Avani property, operated by Minor Hotels' contemporary lifestyle brand, sits along the Zambezi riverbank with views across to the Zimbabwean bank and easy access to the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, which protects a small population of white rhino within walking distance of the falls themselves.

The casino offers roulette, blackjack, baccarat, and slot machines within the resort complex. Like its Zimbabwean counterpart at Elephant Hills, the casino serves primarily as an evening leisure option for a visitor base whose primary motivations are the natural spectacle of the falls and the activity programme — microlight flights, sunset river cruises, guided walks to the falls' edge on the Zambia side (considered the better viewing angle for the Eastern Cataract), and day trips into Botswana's Chobe National Park, 70 km away, for elephant and big-five game drives.

The Zambia-Zimbabwe border crossing at Victoria Falls is one of the most scenic of any crossing in the world: the colonial-era railway bridge over the Batoka Gorge, built in 1905 to Cecil Rhodes's Cape-to-Cairo railway specification, carries both the road border and the famous Victoria Falls Bridge bungee jump. Guests at both the Avani and Elephant Hills routinely cross for day trips, and the casino economy of Livingstone and Victoria Falls town functions as a shared market across the Zambezi.