Resort Management is the comprehensive and strategic oversight of all operations within a resort property, aimed at delivering exceptional guest experiences and maximizing profitability. It involves the efficient coordination of various departments, including accommodations, food and beverage, recreational facilities, guest services, and administration. A successful resort management team ensures that all aspects of the resort are functioning seamlessly to create a welcoming and enjoyable environment for guests. This includes maintaining the highest standards of customer service, implementing effective marketing and sales strategies, managing reservations and bookings, coordinating housekeeping and maintenance services, and overseeing financial operations. Resort managers are responsible for setting the overall vision and direction of the property, developing strategic plans to attract and retain guests, and ensuring that the resort meets or exceeds guest expectations. They work closely with department heads and staff to provide ongoing training and guidance, fostering a culture of exceptional service and professionalism. In addition to guest satisfaction, resort management also focuses on financial performance. Managers are responsible for budgeting, cost control, and revenue management to optimize profitability. They analyze market trends, monitor competitors, and make informed decisions to drive revenue growth and operational efficiency. Resort management also involves maintaining and enhancing the resort's physical infrastructure, including buildings, landscapes, and amenities. This includes regular maintenance, renovations, and upgrades to ensure a visually appealing and well-maintained property. Furthermore, resort managers must stay abreast of industry trends, technological advancements, and evolving guest preferences. They leverage this knowledge to implement innovative practices, adopt sustainable initiatives, and deliver unique experiences that set their resort apart from competitors.

1. Resort Management
Dr Sunil kumar

2. Introduction- Resort
• Any place having a unique feature can be developed and promoted as a
resort. Resorts in itself is a destination.
• According to Markouic, “Tourist Resorts are places which attract large
number of tourists and tourism endows with special characteristics so that
direct and indirect impacts produced by tourism play a significant role in its
existence of development”.
• According to Oxford Dictionary, “Resort means last expedient of a person”.
Expression last expedient has emerged from the fact that in earlier days,
people went to visit holiest cities and other places in their last phase of life.
But nowadays due to increased availability of leisure and disposable income
this concept has changed and as a result various types of resorts have come
into existence.
• Moreover, the misconception that resorts are meant for rich and famous
does not hold ground any more. It has been removed with the use of
extensive publicity.
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Sunil
kumar
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3. TYPES OF RESORTS
• Generally, resorts are classified on the basis of the needs they
are serving or benefits they are deriving for their customers,
i.e., needs and benefits they are created for. By and large they
are located away from the crowded tourist destination,
offering peace and isolation to tourists in natural
surroundings.
• Resorts can be categorised on the basis of their facilities and
services that they shall be offering the guests, viz.:
1) Integrated Resorts,
2) Town Resorts, and
3) Retreat Resorts.
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Sunil
kumar
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4. 1) Integrated Resorts:
• Integrated resorts include holiday sites which offer every
possible facility, service and amenities developed in a planned
manner for the exclusive use of tourists.
• Integrated resorts may vary in size from one resort to another
or several resorts and other type of accommodation units,
offering numerous rooms.
• Typically they are self-contained including various tourist
facilities and services of a commercial centre or commercial
facilities, recreation sport facilities, sometimes cultural
facilities and also conference centre or a major meeting facility
in the resort.
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Sunil
kumar
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5. Contd…
• Some of the integrated resorts contain a wide range of
accommodation from various types of cottages, self-catering
apartments, town houses and villas.
• Self-catering units may be linked by second location
houses/homes or will be available for short-term range to
the guests or
visitors.
• In this type of resorts, configuration can vary from
intensive high-density development with tall building to
medium or low-density profit types.
• However, main considerations are given to open spacing,
landscaping and: other important issues in the resorts.
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Sunil
kumar
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6. 2) Town Resorts:
• A town resort combines the usual land users and activities of the town community that
is economically focused on resort activity and contains resorts, hotels and other type of
accommodation units and tourist facilities and services.
• This type of resort is also typically oriented to a specific attraction feature such as
snow skiing, a beach lake or marine recreation, spas facilities etc.
• There are ideal locations for designing and developing skiing, beach and spas in town
resorts. Beach resort towns like Goa are very popular and spas resort towns in south
India, more particularly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, etc.
• The hill stations, developed at the time of Britishers, too are very popular and some of
them are considered as town resorts or have nearby resorts.
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Sunil
kumar
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7. 3) Retreat Resorts:
• These resorts, though a form of integrated resorts, have gained
more popularity than any other type of resort or accommodation
not only in India but also abroad.
• This category of resort is new in India. Therefore apart from India
other countries also have started working on this new concept
following its successful operations in Caribbean and Pacific islands.
• The retreat resorts operates at small scale, i.e., 25 to 50 rooms but
they offer a high quality of services like resorts located in remote
areas such as small islands and in the mountains.
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Sunil
kumar
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8. Contd…
• The only access may be by boat or by small airplanes or by narrow
building roads.
• Retreat resorts cater to guests who wish a quite isolated vacation
environment but usually with some recreation activity available.
• Remote hunting fishing lodges often function as retreat resorts
because of their specialised character and often, high determination
and operational cost.
• Retreat resorts require careful feasibility analysis before they are
developed and selective marketing after the development. Some of
these resorts are under consideration in India as well at places
which are far from the habitations and cities.
• These can be planned at places like islands of Andaman and
Nicobar and Lakshwadeep, remote hilly areas, etc.
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Sunil
kumar
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9. Categories of Tourist Resorts
•
Generally the resorts tend to be perfect on their part of
entertaining the tourists. As the resorts tend to be the best in
serving visitors in every manner they are categorized on the basis
of their services and nature.
• Hence the resort categories can be considered as follows:
• 1) National Attractions
• a) Holiday Centres – Having good scenery, and
Summer/winter resorts.
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Sunil
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10. • b) Sports Centres – As Winter sports,
• Beach sports,
• Water sports, and
• Aero sports.
• c) Health Centres – Spas,
• Health farms,
• Mineral springs, and
• Therapeutic purposes (for curing).
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Sunil
kumar
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11. 2) Special Historic and Cultural Centres
• Places known for historically important monuments and other special features.
a) Centres of outstanding tradition and cultural attractions, and
b) Places of religious significance.
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Sunil
kumar
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12. • 3) Other Sectors
a) Man made attraction – Fun & Food village, Essel World,
•
b) Centres of education, folk museums, art centres and research centres,
•
c) Centre of economic importance, places of economic interest, fares, exhibitions and technical centres of
business interests,
•
d) Centres of scientific importance,
•
e) Capital attractions – Administrative centres – Political convention places, and
•
f) Mixed centres – Recreation, Business conferences and conventions.
The World Tourism Organisation has given specific instructions for resort development.
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Sunil
kumar
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13. Characteristics of Resort Management
1. Visitor Market:
• No matter how different resorts are from each other, they all
seek to satisfy guests who have three fundamental needs:
1. Desire for a change of pace, getting away from the familiar.
2. Desire to satisfy recreational interests while being
entertained and stimulated
3. Desire to travel to interesting and attractive places.
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Sunil
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14. 2. Facilities:
• The average length of stay at a resort is longer than hotel,
the facilities are different.
• Rooms are larger, more closet space is needed
• Large amount of lands are required for recreational
activities
• Guests are looking to participate in a variety of activities
as part of their total resort experience.
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Sunil
kumar
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15. 3. Location:
• Guests are attracted to many resorts because of their remote
location
• Many guests travel considerable distances “ get away from it
all” or to enjoy an area of natural beauty
• The properties must be self-contained
• Support services such as laundry and maintenance must be
provided
• Transportation must be provided for employees or shuttle
services to and from the airport to be provided for the guests.
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4. Recreation:
• Most resorts specialize in one recreational type such as
beach activities, skiing and tennis
• Must have year-round attractions
5. Seasonality:
• commercial hotels are year-round, while many resorts are
seasonal

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6. Personnel Attitude:
- Resort guests have extremely high expectations of
service
- They expect to be pampered
- With great pressure on employees to perform at a
high level.

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25. GROWTH TREND OF INDIAN RESORT
MARKET
In the growing tourism market of the 1980s, tourist resorts proliferated in a disorganised manner.
New markets of first generation tourists/guests took advantage of the short jet flight and low prices to
escape the uncertainties of the climate for their annual holidays. Newer destinations were added to
operators’ programmes and new resorts were built to cater their demand. This led to the rapid
development of previously untouched coastline in places like Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu
etc. These coastlines were characterised with “high density, low -grade holiday townships, and were
lacking not only visual attraction but also basic services”. This growth, primarily was fuelled by the
low price as commented on earlier.
In the short term the price war benefited the tourists and holidayers but the reduction in profitability
affected the resortiers as well as the hoteliers and tour operators. As long as the tourists kept coming,
there was no perceived problem, except in the minds of a sensitive elite who were not the target
market of resorts. This attitude also helps to explain for you the lack of product differentiation
strategies in designing and developing of these resorts during the period of growth.
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Sunil
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26. • The Changing Scene in the 1990s
In recent years, tourist movement towards the resorts has shown a considerable growth in the
accommodation industry. The growth rate by 1998 was 15% which over the last three years has grown
to 20%. Globally, resort business is worth US$ 9 billion but in India it is Rs.200 crore industry. This
upswing growth trend is due to the entry of global players like Royal Resorts, Le Meridience, Marriot
and many more to hold to this list.
Reasons for it’s Success in Present Scenario
Resorts work very successfully as 1ong as the guests’ prime concern is relaxation and recreation in a
climate among people whom they feel comfortable. The very artificiality of the resort enhances the
sense of the holiday as a break from the real world. The familiar symbols in a warmer/cooler climate
create a relaxed mood in which the normal social inhibitions are suspended.
The function of the resort in this holiday experience is primarily to provide leisure at prices based on
lower wage costs and favourable exchange rates. It also gives the holiday an exotic background often
experienced as superficially as that of a themed bar or restaurant at Error! These are not defined as
tangible in the form of souvenirs of the local or national stereotyped symbols – famous buildings,
wildlife or local customs – which bear little relation to the content of the holiday. Often they are not
relevant to the particular region of location of the resorts as the wooden articles (Kerala), etc. The
souvenirs and gifts help to give the guest/tourist status on his return to home from the resort which is
at a exotic place.
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Sunil
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27. Changing Perceptions and
Expectations
• With increased competition from upcoming destinations and the greater sophistication of the
tourist, differentiation of the resort product has been recognised to be essential. It is also being
realised that the quality of the product, which can be seen as gap between expectation and
perception of tourists, has fallen. This is due to three basic factors:
• Lack of refurbishment: First there is the lack of refurbishment of the accommodation as
previously mentioned, and also of the infrastructure of the resort itself. When the resorts were
built with their en-suite bathrooms, balconies and extended meal times, they seemed luxurious in
comparison with holiday accommodation in the domestic market. These facilities are now taken for
granted and the general standard of furnishing, decor and fittings has not kept pace with the
guests’/tourists’ own standards at home, barring a few sophisticated new resorts. The attractions
and entertainment standards cannot be compared with tourist complexes like Essel World.
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Sunil
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28. • Environmental awareness: Secondly, there has been an environmental awareness. This,
however,
does not mean that the average beach resort guest/tourist is a dedicated ecologist looking
for
sustainable tourism. In reality, stories in the popular media have made the average resort
tourist
aware of the threat of pollution and disease in beach resorts of poor standards, of hygiene
and fire
safety in holiday resorts and so the names of the popular resorts have become associated
with
overcrowding, over development – half-resorts, noisy and dusty construction sites.
•
• Lager louts: Thirdly, the price war years have produced a phenomenon known as the
'Lager lout'.
Encouraged by cheap discounted fares and holiday packages targeted at the teen and
twenty
markets, large number of youngsters flock the big resorts with their all night disco bars.
The
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29. • • Out of fashion: The concept of the adoption curve is relevant here. New products, such as
destinations, are first bought by a relatively smaller group of ‘innovators’ who are attracted by the
idea of trying something new and different. These people set the trend or fashion, which is copied
first by ‘early adopters’, then by the majority and lately by the ‘laggards ’ who only adopt the most
tried and commonplace products. It is clear that the beach resorts have ceased to attract the
innovators and allo-centric tourists. You should, therefore, worry more about the fact that in the
tourist industry majority of the mid- to psycho-centric tourists are becoming dissatisfied and ready
to move on to attractive options.
• Moving on: The tourist and the tour operator can move on to newer, more distant destinations,
switchover to other types of holiday or revert to domestic tourism. The established resorts remain.
Tourism which is mostly responsible for the employment in some of the states than any other
industry like Garhwal and Kumaun in Uttaranchal, Jammu and Kashmir in northern region, Goa
on western coast and eastern region states like Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland,
Mizoram and Arunanchal Pradesh, is as much a mono-culture as any Third World cash-crop, and
communities which depend on it are just as vulnerable to fluctuations in world demand
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Sunil
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30. Lessons learnt over years for
developing resorts:
• It might seem easy in hindsight to prescribe lessons for newly developing resorts to avoid
the mistake of the past but the pressures that led to thosemistakes still exist. But still a
few useful guidelines for you can be there to avoid over dependence on particular markets,
or on tourism at the expense of other industries and agriculture. Tourism can also be a
successful mean of bringing prosperity to India and remains an attractive model for other
communities in need of foreign exchange for development. You should never lose control of
the distribution channel. More particularly any individual resort cannot penetrate
international markets effectively without the aid of intermediaries in the target countries.
As it has been a best way to sell a holiday resort in a foreign as well as domestic market is
to make sure it is in a tour operator’s brochure or website. You must maintain and enhance
the quality of the resort facilities. This, of course, requires investment since this is a price-
led low-profit-margin industry, which can be difficult to generate on purely commercial
grounds. It also requires development controls which in its early years of development could
be difficult to impose from political point of view.
• As a newer resort, you could save expense and problems in the long term by balancing the
desire to grab the benefits of tourism with the need to control some of the most obvious
environmental consequences from the beginning of the project itself. An optimist would
argue that the growing environmental awareness in the major tourism-originating nation,
like India, makes this task easier than it was for the resorts which developed in the 1980s
and in the early 1990s.
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Sunil
kumar
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31. POTENTIAL SUPPLY RESOURCES FOR
TOURIST RESORTS
• Everything, which has a possession in this world, can be a source of supply and so has
the
development of resorts. This can be applicable to hills, beaches, plains, desert, towns,
villages, etc.
• These areas tend to abide the nature for tourism in a way that the tourism formalises in
a better manner. These sources are the constituents of the tourism without which no
activity directly or indirectly related to tourism are at all possible. As you know by now
that the hills, beaches, plains all have their own importance in the aspects of the
tourism related activities.
• For instance, hills have their own importance in designing tourism products where the
tourists forbid for the nature's beauty and love. It has its own ambience in the tourist
market and holds the glory for its beauty, purity and calmness. These mountains have
stood past for several years, and have given us a lot more like rain, unique flora and
fauna (which are not found any where in the world), unique people with unique culture
who reside on these mountains and much more. Because of its purity and aesthetic value
the visitors have always been attracted towards it whether be it for any sort of
knowledge or for any adventurous activities.
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Sunil
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32. • India, as we know has a vast diversity in nature, in terms of landscapes, beautiful valleys, beaches,
mountains, forests, ghats, etc. India is very distinctive in its seasonal factor as it has all the perspective
seasons that are found on as summer, winter, autumn and spring.
• Each activity related to tourism confers recreation, pleasure and satisfaction to the tourist who is willing
to go for tourism activity in India. On the other hand resort concept has taken the tourism industry by a
storm.
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Sunil
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33. • Resort as a whole has a lot to serve in a country like India where a tourist needs to have only
courage and ability for going for any type of activities related to tourism. The potentiality of
resorts is very promising as it has started a new domain in the tourism industry .It has given a
completely a new
meaning to the accommodation sector as well as to the accommodation units in terms of
accommodating the guests or the tourists entirely in a different and new manner.
Resorts nowadays are becoming so popular that the people have started visiting such places
where they find good and prosperous moods of life. They tend to spend their holidays there and
try to accommodate themselves with the environment of the particular resort.
• As we know that sources. Of supply for a resort can be differentiated in terms of its geographical
situation that is at what part of the
earth it is situated, at what height, with what physiographic conditions and acquires what
facilities and services. Similarly the resorts tend to be at distant places where one enjoys every bit
of it.
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Sunil
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34. Reasons for Failure
Areas having potential fail aesthetically and financially, for which areas which bound to have something
or the other from the tourism point of view fall drastically in their market ratings. It is because of the
following main reasons:
• Lack of market research: A resort or other tourist facility cannot survive without a market. Many
facilities have been built with little or no thought given to market feasibility. Established resorts fail
because of changing tastes, obsolescence, changes in transportation, new competition and poor
management.
• Lack of area planning: Tourist facilities that have not been controlled or planned carefully can become
part of an unappealing jingle of buildings. Each facility owner is forced to erect a larger sign and to
forego landscaping or other amenities in order to compete. No body profits, least of all the traveller.
• Lack of sufficient long-range funding: The planning which is done to meet the demand in the market
shuffles around funds, which happens to be the foremost part for implementing the planned ideas. This
is where the things go wrong and all the process slashes down. Fund is an element which is required to
deal with the market and when it lags behind everything collapses.
• The problem in tourist destination development lies in determining what groups or markets will want
to visit the resort and providing those things that will prove enjoyable to them.
• Other determining factors are the expectations of the resident population and government policies and
restrictions.
• The expectations of the visitor largely determine the design and components of the resort.
• Other determining factors are the expectations of the resident population and government policies and
restrictions.
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Sunil
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