What is a resort?

[yakkity]

I always refer to a hotel with expansive facilities as a resort. Like Ikos or Four Seasons or Six Senses. A place covering quite a bit of ground with pool/s, spa centre, fitness centre, multiple eating establishments, tennis courts and maybe water activities available like diving, boat trips, kayaks etc. sometimes if they are individual accommodations scattered about you might get cycles. Golf buggy pick and and drop offs etc.

I notice that lots of UK people refer to an area as a resort. An area which has lots of hotels.

is this a UK thing? What does resort mean to you and where are you from?

A resort can be a destination with multiple hotels, not just one place to stay with multiple restaurants. Dassia in Corfu is a resort, for example. Or Val D'Isere in the French Alps.

A self contained holiday place can also be a resort but it's not the only type.

I would call an area where people go on holiday a resort and a complex with rooms, restaurants, pools etc, no matter how fancy or extensive, a hotel.

So Blackpool and Benidorm are resorts. The Four Seasons and Ikos are hotels.

I'm in the UK and, if it's relevant, we generally go out and about on holiday, beach, watersports, museums, walking etc but might spend some time in the hotel pool in the late afternoon or early evening. We only ever self cater or stay B&B, so go to restaurants outside the hotel for meals.

Yeah, a 'resort hotel' and a 'holiday resort' are two different things.

The thing you've described in your OP, a huge sprawling hotel with loads of facilities is a 'resort hotel' because it feels like a self-contained resort in itself and the idea is that you (or your money!) have no need to leave the grounds because everything is on site.

A 'holiday resort' is an area where people go on holiday. It can be coastal, in the mountains, wherever, but it isn't just one hotel and its own facilities, it has individual hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions, in popular tourist areas.

I don’t know why I never googled it but I just have and I can see it is a different culture thing. British when using ‘resort ‘ refer to an area. North Americans use resort to mean a full facility establishment like Four Seasons/six senses etc.

I guess other countries fall into one or the other descriptions. I wonder what people from other countries mean when they say resort.

This, completely. Both can be shortened to resort and the context makes it clear whether it is a holiday resort (area) or resort hotel (specific large hotel) being referred to.

I would always refer to a resort as a beach town or area. I have never been to a hotel big enough to be called resort.

I've always referred to a resort as a holiday town or village, however in the last 10 years or so have noticed that if Googling for holiday resort information I always get search results for large hotel resort complexes. Wonder if the change to the meaning of the word is a marketing creation to differentiate the large hotel complexes on sites with multiple facilities from bog standard hotels?

It's one of these words that mean different things in the UK and the USA.

A resort in the UK is a town or village where people go on holiday and there are things for them to do.

In the USA it means, as you say, a group of buildings and other facilities such as swimming pools, bars, play areas. Often they are surrounded by some sort of barrier.

There are lots of words with different meanings across the Atlantic, fanny, suspenders, calling universities 'school', chips, faggot (not offensive here it can either be a type of meatball covered in caul or the twigs you use to light a fire).

Well I think it means somewhere man made - so not where people actually live - but where people pay to do activities/stay. The key thing is they are designed to make money out if you.