Hotels and Resorts: An investor's guide presents a comprehensive analysis of how hotels, golf courses, spas serviced apartments, gyms and health clubs and resorts are developed, operate and are valued. Drawing on over 18 years’ experience in the leisure property industry, David Harper provides invaluable advice on how to buy, develop and sell such properties. Working through the required due diligence process for purchases, including how to identify a "good buy", through the "route map" for a successful development and ending with how to ensure you maximise your returns when selling the asset, this book covers the whole life-cycle of leisure property ownership. Examples of valuations, development issues and sales processes are taken from the USA, UK, France, Nigeria, Kenya, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil provide in depth analysis on the similarities and differences in approach to hotels and resorts in various parts of the world. This book provides invaluable guidance to international investors, developers, asset managers and students in related subject areas.

These intimate stories of South Indian immigrants and the families they left behind center women’s lives and ask how women both claim and surrender power—a stunning debut collection from an O. Henry Prize winner Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart. In “Malliga Homes,” selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students. Sindya Bhanoo’s haunting stories show us how immigrants’ paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise.

Two New York Times–bestselling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain. In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it. Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice. Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

This book provides detailed, up-to-date knowledge that will help property professionals become successful in the hotel market. The book includes a range of valuation practices and shows the reader the most effective way to read, manage and work their way through this highly competitive market. The author focuses on current methodology and practice within the hotel market, the market trends and legalities which will change or amplify those practices, and further sets out property investment options with real examples.

This stunning compendium features destinations - both well-known and little-known, both urban and exotic - that attract visitors from around the globe. Each destination was created with its own unique vision, and every detail was designed to embody that vision. Breathtaking photography enables readers to experience many of the worlds very finest destinations, and evocative sketches tell the story of how each was created. The visionaries behind these creations are world-renowned architects and designers, Wimberley Allison Tong & Goo (WATG), whose singular mission over the last six decades has been 'to create special environments that lift the spirits'.

The evolution of an arid desert area into the verdant oasis that is the Wigwam Resort was ultimately brought about by an unlikely crop needed by an important American corporation in the early 20th century. The crop was long-staple cotton and the corporation was the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture discovered that Arizona's Salt River Valley was an ideal location to domestically grow long-staple cotton, Goodyear purchased 16,000 acres in the desert west of Phoenix to cultivate the crop for their newly developed pneumatic tire. The company built a three-room lodge, originally called the "Organization House," for the executives that came to oversee the farming operations. The location became a popular winter retreat within the company, and in 1929, Goodyear expanded the facilities and opened "The Wigwam" as a hotel. As the years progressed, amenities such as golf and fine dining were added, and the Wigwam Resort became one of the premier luxury destinations in the Southwest.