This lecture explains to developers the main difference between the two products: a city apartment is sold as a dwelling. A resort unit, an aparthotel or glamping are sold as part of the environment: recreation, health, service, rent, management, family use and the growth of the value of the territory.
The lecture aims to show that resort real estate in Altai can have a wider audience, a more flexible income model and a stronger investment packaging than a regular city apartment.
Colleagues, it's not just what we build that matters in development, it's what we actually sell.
At first glance, a city apartment and a resort unit are similar, and there are walls, squares, engineering, finishing, documents, price and buyer, but from a market perspective, they are different products.
A city apartment often answers one basic question: where a person will live, and a resort property answers another question: why a person will come here, what they will get here, why they will stay longer, and why this property can generate income.
That's the difference.
A city apartment is almost always tied to local demand, bought by people in the city, by people who move to the city, by parents for children, by investors for change, or by buyers who are counting on the price to rise, and if the mortgage is expensive, incomes don't rise, the population is cautious and the market is overloaded, the sales rate drops.
In 2025, the Russian housing market showed this dependence well. According to Dom.RF, sales of new buildings in Russia under equity contracts amounted to about 5-5.2 trillion rubles. Formally, the market remained large, but analysts separately noted the adaptation to high mortgage rates, the growth of installments and transactions for own funds.
For a city developer, this is an important signal: if a buyer can't buy a home on a mortgage, the product moves slower, the developer is forced to give installments, discounts, shares, subsidize the rate, keep the sales department, increase the advertising budget and wait longer for capital turnover.
Resort properties are different, and they require a solvent buyer, but they're not just sold through housing, but they can be sold through investment, personal vacations, family ownership, rental income, participation in a growing area, medical tourism, and load management.
It expands the audience.
The buyer of a city apartment is most often associated with a specific city; the buyer of a resort unit can live in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok or abroad. He does not need to work near the facility. He needs to understand why he needs the object and who will manage it in his absence.
So the resort unit should not be sold as a "social apartment with an area of so many meters"; it is a weak supply; it should be sold as part of a working system: natural location, medical core, service, management company, tourist flow, stay program, personal recreation and income model.
In the city, the buyer looks at the subway, schools, courtyards, parking, transport, district and price per square meter. In Altai, the buyer looks at another: river, forest, view, silence, route, air quality, medical program, bath complex, food, excursions, security, management, seasonality, reviews, loading and resale.
If the developer doesn't understand this, he takes the urban logic into the resort environment, builds a standard building, counts square meters, draws layouts, makes a regular booklet and waits for the buyer, but the resort buyer buys not only the layout, he buys the meaning of ownership.
Strong resort properties sell three things at once: place, income and life scenario.
The place is Altai, a specific area, landscape, water, forest, panorama, silence, accessibility and location status.
Income is the opportunity to pass through the management company, participation in the tourist flow, medical and health loading, seasonal and off-season programs.
The life scenario is personal use, family vacation, recovery, visits to health programs, the opportunity to leave the city in a strong natural environment for at least part of the year.
A city apartment rarely gives this set of meanings, it can be liquid, it can be convenient, it can be useful, but it doesn't usually create a separate lifestyle, and a resort property can do that if it's properly built into the territory.
That is why the global market is moving more and more towards projects where real estate is connected to brand, service and management. The branded residence sector is growing because the buyer pays not only for walls, but for trust, service, standards, management and belonging to a strong place. According to Savills, the number of branded residence projects in the world was expected to grow from 764 in December 2024 to 910 by the end of 2025, which is about 19% per year.
Knight Frank gives a similar picture: he says the number of branded residence schemes has grown from 169 in 2011 to 611, and by 2030 it is projected to grow to 1,019 projects. This is not a random fashion. This is a global shift: buyers want properties that have a clear environment, management and premium positioning.
This is especially important for Altai, because we don't have to copy international hotel brands, but the logic should be the same: the unit should be part of a managed resort product, not a single property in nature.
If you have a sanatorium, a medical program, an atrium of services, a bath complex, routes, food, transfer, service and a single management company next to a unit, it's different. The buyer understands that the object will not be left without life. It is built into the flow.
And this is the principle that you build in your model, which is that the sanatorium and the medical center anchor, and the partners build their accommodation around it: glampings, aparthotels, units, modular homes, small buildings, and it's not a chaotic development, but a spa environment where each object reinforces the next one.
This gives the partner an advantage in the sale.
You can explain to the buyer not only the area and the finish, but the whole economics of the ownership. They buy a unit near the health center. The center attracts people to health programs. The tourists come not only in the summer, but for recovery, stress reduction, therapeutic nutrition, routes, silence and long rest. The management company can rent out the facility, serve guests and form loads.
This product sells more than just a house in the woods.
Glamping as a format also confirms this trend: According to Grand View Research, the global glamping market was estimated at $3.79 billion in 2025 and could grow to $7.87 billion by 2033. The reason is clear: people want nature, but they no longer want to give up comfort, service, safety and aesthetics.
For Altai, it's a direct hit. Nature is the main asset here, but it can't be sold roughly. You can't just put a few houses and call it a resort. You need to create a product where natural power is combined with comfort, medicine, architecture, service and management.
Resort properties require different packaging: the city sells a square meter, price, delivery date, mortgage and neighborhood, and in Altai you have to sell landscape, program, profitability, personal use, route, health, management company and territory growth.
The developer should not think like a builder, but as a market creator.
The most common way to sell a city apartment is to leave the developer's orbit, build it, hand over the keys, close the obligations, and in a resort project, it's more profitable to stay inside the system: management, service, rent, operation, additional services, re-programs, new queues.
It changes the financial model: one-time construction margins are supplemented by operating income; unit sales are supplemented by management; land is supplemented by capitalization; medical center is supplemented by accommodation; tourist flow is supplemented by the sale of new queues.
That is why the resort development can be more sustainable if it is properly assembled.
But there's an important warning: resort property doesn't automatically become strong, and if there's no management, service, flow, medical or tourist core, understandable program of stay, the unit becomes a regular object with seasonal risk, in which case it can be even weaker than a city apartment.
So the question is not whether to build aparthotels and glampings in Altai, but rather what to build them around.
If there's a void, there's a risk, and if there's a sanatorium, a medical center, routes, a service, a management company, a growing territory, it's an investment product.
And this is where the partner model comes in. The initiator anchors: the health center, the health center, the service atrium, the tourism concept, the big land frame. Partners build accommodations. Unit buyers get a facility in the system. Tourists get a stay program. The land gets more expensive. The next queues are sold for more.
It's not just a property sale. It's a resort town in stages.
In urban development, the logic is often that the faster you sell, the better, and in resort development, a different logic emerges: the more you develop your territory, the more expensive the next sales become.
The first stage sells the idea. The second stage sells the already confirmed demand. The third stage sells the formed environment. At each stage, the object becomes clearer and the land around it becomes more expensive.
So margins here can come from more than just the cost of building, but they come from building trust in the site. They're another source of profit.
So what's important for a developer is to see this. He can not just build an aparthotel, he can enter a system where his facility is getting increased liquidity because of the neighborhood with the services, he can build in queues, he can fix the price of the land redemption, he can use the city apartments as part of the settlement, he can make money from the growth of the value of the surrounding area.
This is especially true now that the city apartment has become a heavier commodity, and it remains necessary, but its implementation depends on local demand and the financial condition of the buyer, and resort real estate, if the model is right, reaches a wider audience and sells more meaning.
Altai has a strong starting position: it has a natural brand, a tourist flow, growing interest in domestic tourism, the potential for inbound tourism, a shortage of quality managed resort areas and the ability to create clusters rather than point facilities.
The final conclusion is simple: a city apartment competes with other apartments, a resort unit in a strong cluster competes not only in space and price, but also in place, health, nature, management, service, revenue model and future growth of the territory.
It's a different market. A developer needs to learn to sell it differently.
Final thesis of the lecture
The city apartment is sold as a place to live, and the resort property is sold as a place to renovate, rest, income and capitalize.
If a developer builds only square meters in Altai, he loses the main advantage of the territory, and if he builds a resort environment, a medical product and a tourist product, he creates new value.
Short option for performing on stage
City apartment and resort unit are different products.
The apartment is sold mainly to a local buyer: live, rent, save money. The resort unit sells more widely: recreation, health, rent, personal use, family asset, resale, participation in a growing territory.
In the city, you buy a square meter. In the Altai, you have to buy a place, a stay scenario, and a managed income model.
If you have a health center, a health resort, a service, a route, a bath complex and a management company nearby, the unit becomes more than just a real estate. It becomes part of the resort product.
That is why aparthotels, glampings and units in Altai can be sold differently from ordinary city apartments, but only on one condition: they must be built not around an empty field, but around a strong resort core.