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esort
A definition of resorts should include at least three
features: they are small geographic units or areas
that offer an array of touristic attractions and
services; their population, at least during the
tourism season, is mostly made up of transients or
visitors; and their economy consists in a high
percentage of transactions where the tourist is
one of the parties. Most touristic exchanges are
conducted in resorts. Often resorts develop in
clusters and form touristic zones usually branded
and marketed together �for example, Cannes, Nice
and St Tropez are part of the CoÃte d'Azur).
The concept of resorts has evolved over time
and their typology is virtually endless. Old resorts
usually were outgrowths of pre-existing communities
that adapted to the demands of modern
tourism, such as fishing ports that spawned new
urban areas with high-rise apartment units around
a beach, or mountain villages now surrounded by
ski lodges and other related facilities. These resorts
tend to have a distinct morphology where the
leisure areas feed on business and market districts
located in the old towns.
More recently, resorts have been developed in a
planned way to become self contained touristic
units. Some of them were carefully blueprinted
from the beginning by private companies, including
Disneyworld in Florida, Hilton Head in South
Carolina and many others. On the other hand,
CancuÂn in Mexico started in the 1970s as part of a
government plan to provide a better economic
future to the depressed Yucatan peninsula. Once
the infrastructural facilities were put in place, the
Mexican government entrusted the development
of touristic facilities to private firms. The CancuÂn
model has been followed in other regions of the
world.
Some of the new resorts, such as the Club Med
villages and its many imitators, often follow an
enclave model. Not only are they smaller and more
specialised than the older resorts, but they also tend
to keep their attractions exclusively reserved to
their clients and to be off limits for most of the local
population. Physical boundaries, all-inclusive meals
and entertainment plans to keep guests inside and
payments made in beads or resort money are all
traits that tend to cut the tourists off from the
surrounding social environment. In this way,
exchanges with the host communities are reduced
to the bare minimum; usually, meaningful social
interactions take place only among the tourists
themselves, and the carefree lifestyle that their
promotional literature depicts becomes their central
attraction.
See also: ecoresort; resort club; resort
development; resort hotels; resort morphology
resort club
resort development, integrated 503
JULIO ARAMBERRI, SPAIN
A resort club is a brand of all-inclusive holiday,
featuring exclusive `club' resort destinations which
are sometimes grouped together under a common
theme. Club members may participate freely in all
resort activities, including sports and entertainment
�see also sport, recreational). The term is also
applied to designated areas within particular
resort settings, where access to special facilities
is restricted to valued clients or `club' members.
BRIAN KING, AUSTRALIA
resort development, integrated
Integrated resort development involves the
simultaneous creation of recreational facilities,
hotel accommodation and real estate. The
project is conceived on an extremely large scale,
requiring considerable financial and technical
resources often out of reach of a single individual,
or even the local community. Hence the developer
may be a large metropolitan-based company
�such a transnational hotel chain) or a consortium
formed especially for the purpose of creating the
resort. Whether a company or an individual, a
single developer is generally responsible for the
project. Due to such external ownership, major
financial benefits leak out of the area. Nevertheless,
communities may find remaining benefits,
occurring through sale of land and an increase of
employment, to be attractive. The latter comes in
two phases, first through the needs for construction
jobs and later through the need for staffing.