Destination hotel

Historic Kviknes destination hotel in Norway

The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Canada

A destination hotel is a hotel whose location and amenities make the hotel itself a destination for tourists, rather than merely a convenient place to stay while traveling through or visiting the area for other reasons.^[1] Destination hotels are also called destination lodgings and sometimes destination resorts. The market for destination hotels is the subject of academic and business analysis.^[2]

A destination hotel is often characterized by:

• Upscale lodging, dining, and activities
• Recreation and entertainment on the hotel's own property
• Distinctive characteristics of the building, gardens, and sometimes history

History

Since the 1800s, the traditional concept of a destination hotel has been based upon a venue which is typically remote and has a natural feature as its attraction.^[2] For example, the Kviknes Hotel in Norway is a difficult to reach remote location which provides visitors access to the scenic fjord at Balestrand. Historically there were certain built-in amenities such as gourmet cuisine, music recitals and shoreline trails; however, the amenities of modern (post 1980) destination hotels dwarf the scale of these earlier models. Many of the Las Vegas and Caribbean resort hotels have complete shopping malls, conference centers and large entertainment halls on site; thus, the contemporary version of a destination often features large on-site capital investment in activities, although the access to a local natural feature is still retained by many newer destination hotels (e.g. Hotel l'Anjajavy in Madagascar).

Historic examples

There are numerous historic venues which were well known in the 19th century, some of which survive to the present. Examples of these properties include:

• Eastern & Oriental Hotel, George Town, Penang, Malaysia
• Raffles Hotel, Singapore
• Kviknes Hotel, Balestrand, Norway
• Metropole Hotel, Avalon, California, USA, circa 1887 Victorian style hotel^[3]
• Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs, Gilroy, California, USA^[4]
• Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park, California
• Hotel Metropole, Vienna, Austria^[5]
• Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz, New York. Owned and operated by the Smiley family since 1869.
• Greenbrier Resort, White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., USA
• Grand Hotel-Mackinac, Mackinac Island, Mich.
• Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, California

Types of destination hotels

There are several distinct types of destination hotels including:

• Geographically remote locations often associated with a noteworthy natural feature such as a volcano or rainforest
• Urban settings^[6]
• Conference center oriented
• Specialized activity settings (e.g. Disneyland Hotel)
• Hotels of unusual construction by virtue of being built into a specialized environment (e.g. ice hotels, cave hotels or treehouse hotels)^[7]
• Boutique hotels

See also

• Luxury resorts
• Canada's grand railway hotels

References

1. ^ Alvin L. Arnold, Arnold Encyclopedia of Real Estate, John Wiley and Sons (1995).^{[page needed]}
2. ^ ^{a b} Grant Ian Thrall, Business Geography and New Real Estate Market Analysis, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England (2002).
3. ^ Stephanie Avnet Yates, Best Places Southern California, Sasquatch Books (2003)
4. ^ National Register of Historic Places, U.S. Dept. of Interior, National Park Service, Office of Management and Budget No. 1024-0018
5. ^ pg. 121, Dieter Klein, Martin Kupf, Robert Schediwy (Ed.) Stadtbildverluste Wien - Ein Rückblick auf fünf Jahrzehnte. LIT Verlag, Vienna 2005. ISBN 3-8258-7754-X
6. ^ John Thomas Delaney, Paul F. Clark, Ann C. Frost, Collective Bargaining in the Private Sector, University of Illinois (2002)
7. ^ John Hill, Robert Glazier, Winford "Buck" Lindsay, Thomas Sykes, Stephen A. Kliment, Brian McDonough, Building Type Basics for Hospitality Facilities, John Wiley and Sons, New York (2001)