Still another trend in resort accommodations is condominium construction. The condominium is a building or group of buildings in which individuals purchase separate units. At the same time they become joint owners of I he public facilities of the structure and its grounds and recreational areas. The condominium has become popular because of the desire of many people to own a second home for vacations. Indeed, many of the owners maintain their condominiums just for this purpose. Others, however, make arrangements whereby they can rent their space when they are not occupying it. It is an obvious attraction for someone who has only a month's vacation a year to be able to make an income from his property for the remaining eleven months. Many owners make enough money in rentals to pay for the purchase price and the maintenance costs of the condominium.
Caravanning and camping reflect another trend in modern tourism, thanks in large part to the automobile. Cars variously called caravans, vans, or campers come equipped with sleeping quarters and even stoves and refrigerators. They are in effect small mobile homes, or at least hotel rooms. Many people also carry tents and other equipment with which they can set up a temporary home. Facilities are now offered in many resort areas for camping. The operator may rent only space, but he may also provide electricity and telephone set vice.
A similar kind of arrangement exists for boat owners who wish to use their boats for accommodations while they are traveling in them. This involves the marina, a common feature of resort areas on waterways. The coast of Florida, for example, is dotted with marinas.
A few resorts that contain a mixture of several different kinds of accommodations have been built in recent years. Probably the most spectacular example is the Costa Smeralda development, constructed on the Italian island of Sardinia by a syndicate headed by the Aga Khan. It contains hotels of varying price ranges, residential areas, marinas, elaborate recreational facilities, and even some light industry. The syndicate's own airline flies passengers to the island from such points as Nice and Home. The Costa Smeralda is the largest and most expensive example in the world of developing not just a resort but an entire resort area. Careful planning included not only mixture of facilities, but also the architecture and the preservation natural landscape.
Some resort areas do not reflect this careful planning Miami Beach, for example, is a monument to tourism and the accommodations industry that serves it, but the beach now is hardly visible because of the hotels that form a wall along the oceanfront. The Condado Beach section of San Juan in Puerto Rico is very similar There are also intensive hotel and apartment developments on the Mediterranean, at Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol in Spain, for example and along much of the coastline of the French Riviera.
In spite of the growth of these and other examples of resort areas blessed with sun and sea, cities like New York, London, and Paris still contain the greatest concentrations of hotels, in 1975. New York had approximately 1OO.OOO guest rooms to 40,000 in Miami Beach. This once again reinforces the fact that the large established cities are still the most important destinations. They can absorb tourism more easily and less conspicuously than areas in which tourism is the principal business.
The hotel business has its own load factor in the form of tin occupancy rate. This is the percentage of rooms or beds that are occupied at a certain point in time or over a period of time. One of the hazards of the hotel business is a high occupancy rate during one season and a very low one during another. For instance, Miami Beach essentially a winter resort. Hotels there try to increase occupancy in the summer by offering very low rates. On the other hand, many summer resorts--like those in New England -- have built winter sports facilities to attract people during then off-season,
Catering, providing food and drink for transients, has always, gone together with accommodations. Food services are a feature of hotels. The typical modern "packaged hotel" includes a restaurant, a coffee shop for quicker and less expensive meals, and a bar cocktail lounge. Many larger hotels have several restaurants, often featuring different kinds of foods, as well as different prices. Hotels also normally provide room service- food and drink that arc brought to the guest's room. In addition, catering service is usually provided in the hotel's recreational areas. The poolside bar and snack bar, for quick food, are normal parts of the service at a resort hotel.
Restaurants, bars, and nightclubs outside the hotels are a standard feature of the resort scene. Indeed, many resorts could not really operate without them. They provide not only catering, but also some kind of entertainment for the tourist who is bored with the limits of hotel life. In some areas, like Miami Beach, they have sprung up without any apparent design, but in others, like the Costa Smeralda, they are carefully coordinated features of the total plan. In cities like New York, London, or Paris, restaurants and other catering establishments that serve the resident population obtain additional business from the tourists who flock to those cities.
Food, in fact, may be one of the reasons why people travel. Many people go out of their way to visit France, for example, because of the gourmet meals that are served there. Similarly, the excellent restaurants of Hong Kong constitute one of its principal tourist attractions.
It should also be pointed out that many grocery stores, delicatessens, and liquor stores make money from tourism. This is true in large tourist cities like New York and in resort areas like Miami Beach. There is usually a food store at or near most marinas and camping areas. The accommodations and catering service industries employ large numbers of people. According to the United States census of 1970, more than 733,000 people were working in hotels, and more than 3.3 million in restaurants. Of course not all of these depend on the tourist trade, but the figures are indicative of the amount of labor involved in these businesses. At a luxury hotel, there may be as many as two or three employees for every guest room. At a large commercial hotel, there are usually about eight employees for every ten guest rooms.
This intensive use of labor is one of the reasons why tourism is so attractive to developing countries. Furthermore, many of the hotel and restaurant jobs are semiskilled work, so only a small amount of training is necessary to fill them.
2. Tourism in Spain
2.1 Useful information about Spain
If you are coming to Spain for the first time, be warned: this is a country that fast becomes an addiction. You might intend to come just for a beach holiday, or a tour of the major cities, but before you know it you'll find yourself hooked by something quite different - by the celebration of some local fiesta, perhaps, or the amazing nightlife in Madrid, by the Moorish monuments of Andalusia, by Basque cooking, or the wild landscapes and birds of Estremadura. And by then, of course, you will have noticed that there is not just one Spain but many. Indeed, Spaniards often speak about Spain in the plural.
The cities - above all - are compellingly individual. Barcelona, for many, has the edge: for Gouda's splendid modernista architecture, the lively promenade of Las Ramblas, and not least, for Bara - the city's football team. But Madrid, although not as pretty, has the advantages. The city and its people, immortalized in the movies of Pedro Almodavar, have a vibrancy and style that is revealed in a thousand bars and summer terrazas. Not to mention three of the world's finest art museums. Then there's Sevilla, home of flamenco in southern Spain; Valencia, Levantine, city with the vibrant nightlife to equal any European rival; and Bilbao, due to Frank Gehry's astonishing Guggenheim museum, is the most visited tourist place of «Basque's country».
Touring Castile and Lean, you confront the classic Spanish images of great cathedrals and reconsquista castles. Andalusia has the great mosques and Moorish palaces of Granada, Sevilla and Cordoba; Castile has the superbly preserved medieval capital, Toledo.
The best places for rest in Spain are undeniably its beaches. Long tracts of coastline - along the Costa del Sol, in particular - have been developed into concrete hotel complexes. On the Costa Brava, the string of coves between Palamos and Begur are often overlooked, while in the south there are superb windsurfing waters around Tarifa and some decidedly key resorts along the Costa de la Luz.
Wherever you are in Spain, you can't help but notice the Spaniards infectious enthusiasm for life.
2.2 When to go to Spain
Overall, spring, early summer and autumn are ideal times for a Spanish trip - though the weather varies enormously from region to region. The high central plains suffer from fierce extremes, stiflingly hot in summer, bitterly cold and swept by freezing winds in winter. The Atlantic coast, in contrast, has a tendency to damp and mist, and a relatively brief, humid summer. The Mediterranean south is warm virtually all year round, and in parts of Andalusia positively subtropical, warm enough to wear a T-shirt by day even in the winter months.
In high summer the other factor worth considering is tourism itself. Spain plays host to some thirty million tourists a year - almost one for every resident - and all the main beach and mountain resorts are packed in July and August, as are the major sights. August, Spain's how holiday month, sees the coast as its most crowded and the cities, by contrast, pretty sleepy.
2.3 Eating and drinking in Spain
There are two ways to eat in Spain: you can go to a restaurant or commodore (dining room) and have a full meal, or you can have a succession of tapas (small snacks) or raciones (larger ones) at one or more bars.
At the bottom line a comedor - where you'll get a basic, filling, three-course meal with a drink, the menu del dia - is the cheapest option, but they're often tricky to find, and drab places when you do. Bars tend to work out pricier but a lot more interesting, allowing you to do the rounds and sample local or house specialties.
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