The classic city grew around work, factories, offices, commerce, education, medicine, banking, logistics, and administrative functions drew people to the big centers, so the city apartment was for decades a major investment product: people bought housing where there was work and social infrastructure.
But that pattern is changing. Remote and hybrid work are weakening the rigid binding of people to the office. Automation and robotics are changing the structure of employment. Demography in Russia, China and developed countries is getting weaker. And the demand for health, recovery, nature, silence, movement, stress and long stay is increasing. So next to old cities, a new type of territory is emerging — resort cities, where growth is built not around production and offices, but around quality of life, medical tourism, wellness, remote work, outdoor activities, glamping, units and management companies.
1.The old town grew around work, the new resort town grows around quality of life
Historically, the city was a place of concentration of work. People went to places where there was a factory, an institution, an office, a market, a university, a hospital, an administrative center and a transportation center. The city apartment became a must-have because work and life were tied to the same place.
A new kind of resort city is built on a different logic, one that is not a factory or an office, but a living environment, where people come not because they have to work in a particular business, but because they can live, they can recover, they can work remotely, they can take health and wellness programs, they can relax, they can travel in nature, and they can own a profitable asset at the same time.
It doesn't mean that the classic cities will disappear. They will remain centers of government, science, education, business, medicine and culture. But part of the demand for real estate, part of the capital and part of the way of life will go to the territories where people can not only earn money, but also recover.
A new kind of resort town is not a sleeping area or a campground, it's an environment where people can live longer than their usual vacation.
2.Remote work is changing the geography of residence
Remote work has not replaced the office entirely, but it has changed the market: According to VTsIOM, a quarter of working Russians worked entirely from home or in a hybrid format in 2025, up 6 percentage points from 2022, and VTsIOM also sees an increase in the attractiveness of full remote and hybrid formats compared to previous years.
It's really important for real estate, because if you can work from different places, you start choosing not just an apartment next to your office, but also a place where you want to live, you need the Internet, security, service, medicine, nutrition, nature, sports, silence, routes, communication and infrastructure.
So this creates a new type of consumer: a remote worker, an entrepreneur, a specialist, a consultant, an IT employee, a designer, a marketer, an executive, or a business owner who can live outside the metropolis for a year, and he doesn't necessarily move permanently. He can buy a unit at a resort, come in for a month or several times a year, work from there, go through recovery programs, and then take the object out of the management company for the rest of the year.
This is the new investment scenario: real estate is not only for rent, but also for flexible living.
3 Demography limits the endless growth of the old urban model
Cities can no longer be assumed to automatically grow by increasing population, with a number of developed countries aging and shrinking, and China already facing a steady decline. Reuters reported that China’s population has declined for the third year in a row, dropping 1.39 million people to 1.408 billion in 2024, while facing low fertility, aging and pressure on future labor.
China, Japan, Italy and South Korea are among the countries facing aging and declining populations; the UN predicts that the world population will peak in about 60 years and then begin to decline.
The conclusion for development is hard: if the population is not growing fast, you can't build the same urban square meters indefinitely and wait for automatic demand. In the future, there will be increased competition not only between developers, but also between life formats. The city apartment will compete with suburban real estate, resort unit, aparthotel, glamping, service residence and share in the resort business.
Resort towns get a chance precisely because they sell not just meters, but a new life scenario.
4 Automation is changing the role of the city as a place of employment
The classic city was designed because the workplaces were physically tied to the place: the factory, the office, the warehouse, the store, the institution, but automation is slowly changing the structure of employment. Part of the production processes are being robotized. Some of the office processes are being automated through software solutions and artificial intelligence. Some of the services are being digitalized.
This doesn't mean that labor is gone, but it means that the physical concentration of millions of people near the workplace is no longer the only possible model, and more people can work partially remotely, projectively, hybridly, or run a business remotely.
In this situation, the territory that gives quality of life becomes a competitor to the territory that gives only a workplace, and for some people, it becomes more important not to be close to the office, but to live in a healthy environment, to be on the move, to reduce stress, to recover and to keep productive.
A new type of resort city responds to this request.
5 The world’s biggest deficit is not housing, but health and energy.
Modern humans often live in chronic stress, and work, uncertainty, digital noise, credit, competition, overload, sleep deprivation, and inactivity create a sustained demand for recovery.
The WHO points out that about 12 billion working days are lost each year due to depression and anxiety, and the global economy suffers about $1 trillion in productivity losses per year, and the WHO also notes that in 2019, approximately 15% of working-age adults had a mental disorder.
This means that stress, energy recovery, sleep, movement, nutrition, prevention, mental health and environmental change are becoming a major economic demand, not just for relaxation, but for working and quality of life.
Altai can give a strong answer to this request: nature, mountains, rivers, air, silence, movement, excursions, RDT, health school, medical supervision, bath practices and a long stay.
6.The Wellness Market Confirms Capital Shift to Health
The Global Wellness Institute estimates the global wellness market at $6.8 trillion in 2024. According to GWI, the market grew 7.9 percent for the year, doubled since 2013 and is projected to grow to $9.8 trillion by 2029.
Notably, health and recovery tourism is growing as part of this large economy, with GWI noting that wellness tourism, spa and thermal/mineral springs have become some of the fastest growing destinations between 2023 and 2024.
And this is a key signal for resort development, and the investor will increasingly look not only at the location and the square, but also at the problem that the area is solving, and if the area is healthy, healthy, healthy, healthy, stress-free, and able to live in the natural environment, it becomes not just a place of recreation, but part of the global wellness economy.
The city of Altai should be built on this logic.
7.The resort city is not a hotel, but an environment of long stay
A regular hotel answers the question of where to sleep, and a resort town answers the other question of how to live here for a week, two, three or a month.
For a long stay, a person needs different scenarios: in the morning, a walk, diagnosis, lecture, soft activity, breakfast. In the afternoon, procedures, coworking, excursions, itinerary, bath, pool, consultation, rest. In the evening, a club, restaurant, lecture, socializing, quiet walk, family program.
If you're here for 14 or 21 days, you can't just have a room, a restaurant, a beautiful view, you're going to get tired, you need an ecosystem, and that's why a resort city needs service centers, a health core, glampings, routes, active areas, quiet areas, family areas, water spaces, bathhouses, lecture halls, coworkings, and a management company.
The longer the stay, the more you need not a hotel, but an urban in complexity, but a resort environment in the sense of the word.
8 Units Become a Form of Ownership in the Resort Town
A new type of resort city needs a flexible ownership model, not every investor wants to own a hotel, not every developer is willing to build a whole project at their own expense, not every guest wants to rent a room, so units become an important form of participation.
The investor buys a unit, an apartment, a room, a modular house, or a glamping facility, and he can use it himself and transfer it to management during periods of absence, and the management company delivers the unit, provides loading, maintenance, reporting and payments.
It's different from a city apartment. An apartment is usually rented out to a single tenant; a unit works as part of a hotel fund; an apartment is tied to a city and a job; a unit is tied to a resort, health, recreation, remote work and a service environment.
For the investor, this is a new formula: not just “buyed an apartment and rented out”, but “buyed a place in the resort ecosystem, use it myself and receive income from management”.
9. Project JSCs give second level of participation
Units are the ones that do the housing, but not the entire economy of the resort city: a bath complex, a medical center, a restaurant, a tour company, rental, transportation, a glamping network and a management company are not always divided into units. They need a different model, project AOs.
So you create a company for a specific business, and investors invest in, get shares in, and share in the profits of a company if it's formed and distributed, and you can fund the facilities that make a resort town live.
The result is a two-tiered investment model: units for those who want to own a property; project JSCs for those who want to own a part of a resort business; this expands the pool of investors and allows you to build not one property, but an ecosystem.
This is especially important for Altai, because large territories require many specialized services, not one developer for all.
10.Glampings expand resort town into nature
A resort town doesn't have to be a closed complex, but its strength is that it becomes a base for traveling around the Altai, and the guest can live in an aparthotel, have a wellness program, and then go out for one or two nights in glamping, to the river, to the lake, to the pass, to the forest, to the valley, to a remote location with air delivery.
So the Altai is not just a single point, but a network of natural experiences, and for an international tourist, this is especially valuable, and he's not going for one hotel, but for the route, the rare nature, the safety and the organized experience.
Glampings are supposed to be natural companions of resort towns, extending the duration of stay, creating new services, supporting local businesses and adding value to the entire territory.
11.Service centers - the heart of the resort town
The more tourists that live nearby, the more services you can create, the more services you can create, the longer you stay, the longer you stay, the more you can load your accommodation, which is the basic economy of a resort city.
The service center should include not only a cafe and reception; in a strong model, it is medical programs, a bath, a swimming pool, restaurants, a lecture hall, a health school, coworking, children's services, rental, a tour bureau, transport, clubs, events, local food stores, farm food and routes.
Hotels and glampings can have their own services, but basic services need to be brought together in clear centers, which creates urban density of services without turning the territory into a dense urban area.
A resort city is not a multi-storey building, it's a concentration of meaning and services while preserving natural space.
12.The medical core creates year-round
The main risk of resort properties is seasonality: in summer, flow is higher, in winter, off-season is more difficult. The medical and wellness core reduces this risk, because health and stress are independent of the month.
Anti-stress, sleep recovery, RDT, health school, executive programs, burnout recovery, weight loss, movement, bath, lectures, excursions and meals can work all year round, and if a resort sells not just recreation but recovery, it gets a longer economy.
For Altai, the medical core should not be an additional service, but a semantic center of the resort city, which gives a reason to come for 10-21 days, not just for weekends.
It also boosts unit yields: If there is a year-round reason to come, the investor sees a more sustainable load.
13.The resort city creates jobs where people remain valuable.
Automation may reduce the need for some of the workers in the industry and offices, but a resort town creates jobs in an area where human participation remains important: doctors, administrators, guides, instructors, cooks, bathers, masseurs, drivers, stablemen, translators, program managers, tour guides, service specialists, coaches, teachers and managers are all people who create the quality of the guest experience.
Robots and AI can help: booking, transfer, analytics, cleaning, logistics, CRM, navigation, security, process automation, but in medicine, hospitality, routes, recovery and human interaction, live staff will be valued higher.
Therefore, the resort city creates not only a tourist flow, but also a permanent staff: staff, entrepreneurs, remote workers, unit owners, service companies, medical specialists, guides and families of employees.
This is an important argument for the Altai Republic: resort towns can not only host guests, but also create new population and employment.
14.The international tourist does not require a hotel, but a time programme
For a foreign tourist, Altai is more difficult than popular mass destinations, so he must understand what he is going for, and he needs not abstract beauty, but a time program.
For China, it can be nature, clean air, photogenic routes, family wellness programs, winter Altai, glamping and premium excursions. For Germany and Europe, medical recovery, natural routes, sanatorium logic, RDT, stress, long stay and silence. For Russian-speaking foreign audiences, return to Altai, health, sanatorium tradition, health school and understandable language environment.
The resort city should be ready for this: translation, transfer, medical documents, service, security, international website, programs for 7, 10, 14 and 21 days, videos, reviews and a clear booking system.
The foreign tourist doesn't buy a place to sleep. He buys organized life for the duration of the trip.
15 How the resort town differs from the usual tourist base
The turfhouse sells accommodation and some services. The resort town sells the ecosystem.
The tourist base usually lives as a facility, and the resort town is connected by many facilities: aparthotels, glampings, a medical center, a bathhouse, restaurants, routes, coworkings, clubs, services and project companies.
The tourist base is often season-dependent.The resort city is committed to year-round loading through health, recovery, events, programs and international flow.
The tourist base is limited to its territory, and the resort city may have a network of glamping and itineraries throughout the Altai Republic.
A single-ownered tourist base, a resort city can be built by many developers, investors and operators, but with a single strategy.
It's a qualitatively different level.
16 How a resort town differs from a sleeping area
A resort town is not to be confused with a typical cottage town or a residential area in a beautiful location. A bedroom area serves accommodation. A resort town serves the human condition.
In the residential area, the main elements are houses, roads, parking, shops, school, kindergarten. In the resort city, the main elements are accommodation, medicine, recovery, routes, services, bath, water, food, clubs, activity, glamping, management and time program.
If you take the urban model to the Altai, you get the development. If you create a resort model, you get the territory of growth.
This is a fundamental difference for developers: you can't build a mountain complex and expect it to become a resort, but a resort is created by services, management and meaning.
17.How the resort town should grow
The city should grow gradually.
First the land, the concept, the master plan, the legal and engineering roadmap. Then the first stage: modular units, glamping city, bathhouse, cafe, routes, wellness block and management team. Then the aparthotel and unit sales. Then the medical core, service center, restaurants, swimming pools, lecture halls, clubs and coworkings. Then the glamping network, route programs, international marketing and project JSCs for services.
Each stage has to add value to the previous one. Service increases unit loads. Units stream services. The medical core creates year-roundness. Glampings reveal nature. International marketing increases the average check. Project AOs raise capital. The management company links everything into the system.
This is not just the growth of the building, but the capitalization of the territory.
18 Risks of resort towns of a new type
The first risk is to call a resort town a normal development, and if there's no medical core, no services, no routes, no CC and no program of stay, it's not a resort town.
The second risk is to overload nature, and if you build it too tightly, the Altai will lose its main value.
The third risk is a weak management company, and without management, units, services and glamping will become a fragmented market.
The fourth risk is the overreaching promise of returns, and investors need to show scenarios, not fantasies.
Fifth risk is the lack of staff. The resort town requires professional staff.
The sixth risk is underestimation of infrastructure: roads, electricity, water, heating, sewage, communications and security must be planned in advance.
The seventh risk is the lack of international packaging, and the outdoor tourist will not come to a difficult area without a product that is understandable.
19 Why Altai is suitable for such a model
Altai has a rare combination of factors: strong nature, mountains, rivers, forests, lakes, air, silence, recognition, tourist interest, potential of medical and ecological tourism, the possibility of glamping networks, different areas with different scenarios and a not yet fully formed resort real estate market.
This is important. In a mature market, most of the capitalization has already occurred. In a weak market, demand may not appear. Altai is in between: demand is already there, but the market can still be formed.
That is why Altai resort cities can become not a copy of Sochi, not a copy of Turkey and not a copy of Dubai, but a separate Russian format: nature, health, movement, RDT, health school, glampings, units, remote work, service centers and international tourism.
20.The practical conclusion
The new type of resort cities is the next level of resort development, and they're not built around factories and offices, but around health, nature, flexible employment, long stays, active tourism, the medical core, glamping, unit and management companies.
For a developer, it's a new market after urban housing; for an investor, a new product between real estate and business; for a region, new jobs, a tax base, a tourist flow and a rise in land value; for an individual, the ability to live not only where they work, but also where there is health, energy and quality of life.
The big takeaway: Old-style cities grew around the need to work, and new-type resort towns will grow around the need to regenerate, live flexibly, be in nature and own an asset in a managed resort environment.
The new kind of resort cities are not just tourist camps or beautiful residential communities, but they are managed ecosystems that connect health, tourism, units, glamping, remote work, health programs, service centers, routes, management companies and international demand.
The old urban model was built around work, but remote employment, automation, demographic change, and the growing demand for wellness are changing the logic of real estate, and more people are wanting to not only own an apartment next to an office, but also have a place in the natural environment where you can live, work, relax, recover and manage.
This is a particularly promising model for the Altai Republic, where you can create not just disparate hotels, but resort cities with a medical core, apart-units, glamping, services, routes and a management company, in which real estate earns not only from rent, but from health, nature, service, long stays and growth of the entire territory.