This updated second edition of ""Resorts: Management and Operation"" addresses the expansion of the resort industry and provides practical, need-to-know information on the development and management of all aspects of these properties, which include ski areas, gaming properties, cruise ships, and spas.

How can owners and managers ensure that their considerable capital investments will return a competitive return on their investments? How can users and owners be sure they enjoy the promises of tantalizing marketing and real estate claims? Managing Sustainable Resorts Profitably combines business management principles with environmental and social concerns to offer development solutions to these questions. By taking an holistic and contemporary approach to the problem of developing sustainable tourism operations, this book provides a comprehensive assessment of the strategies that need to be considered by various governments, developers and, in particular, the customer-investor. The major features of resort development covered by this book include: • Environmental scanning of principal external and internal influential factors • The curse and blessings of seasonality • Competition for people’s recreation and retirement dollars • Guest activity programming • Environmental issues • Cruise ships as mobile resorts • Staffing issues in isolated areas • Financial challenges for owners and operators alike • Risk Management • Mutually beneficial options for various stakeholders Based on an analysis of global resort opportunities and trends, the book focuses on those generic features that differentiate regional resort management from urban-centric management needs and priorities. Using comparative case studies the author emphases best case/benchmark examples of a range of resorts – large and small, urban and rural - to illustrate what can be achieved.

This book provides a complete overview of timeshare development and operation models. The authors take a comprehensive look at the present and future of this growing segment of the hospitality industry, including specialized approaches to marketing, human resources, service quality, finance, legal considerations and professional ethics. Timeshare, or vacation ownership, is a relatively recent leisure phenomenon. It emerged in the late 1950s as a way to secure extra capital resources to fund property expansion. Shareholders had the right to use these properties on a regular basis. Although arrangements have grown in complexity and variation, the model allows for customers to buy rights to use a property for a fixed time period each year. Timeshare arrangements have experienced rapid international growth particularly in the last fifteen to twenty years and are now an important vacation arrangement. Most of the world's major hotel and resort developers now operate timeshare properties. Firms like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Disney and Ramada have brought a new formality and legitimacy to timeshare development and operation.

"In the case of classic hotels, development and management funcitons are generally treated as separate subjects. Resorts are different. The resort business is built on the fulfillment of dreams and desires, while classic hotels focus on necessity and convenience in serving business travelers. Resort development is not a one-time activity, ending with the opening of the resort, but is rather an ongoing process and a planning responsibility of management on behalf of ownership. The variables of a resort are many. A resort's products go beyond the simple provision of lodging, food, and beverage - although these hospitality basics must not only be provided, but given special attention by resorts. Each variable - type and scope of resort, location, seasonlity, range of recreation and amenities, forms of ownership, and other development-related aspects - will have a significant effect on the work of management. Becuase resorts cater to the leisure traveler, whose wants are diverse and fluid, so management must constantly keep abreast of emerging trends that shape guest preferences and create market appeal. Continual reinvestment in the resort plant or investment into new ROI projects is the price of competition in the resort world. Successful resorts, whether a single resort estate or an entire destination, remain perpetual works in progress. Managers who understand the development process will have greater appreciation of the reinvestment costs required to keep a resort attractive enough to retain current guests and gain new ones"--Page xiii