How to Build a Resort in Phases So It Opens Sooner

A resort is not one building. It is guest rooms, a restaurant or hall, pools, lawns, roads, water, sewage and power — on a site that is often some distance from the nearest town. The order those pieces are built in decides how efficiently the site can be worked and how soon the resort can start earning.

Why infrastructure comes first

Access roads, water supply and storage, sewage treatment and electrical distribution go in before the buildings. That can feel like slow progress, because none of it is visible from the approach road, but it is what lets everything after it move quickly:

• Roads carry construction traffic now and guest traffic later — built once, to take both.
• Water and power on site mean each later trade isn’t waiting on tankers and generators.
• Drainage set out early stops a monsoon from turning an open site into a standstill.

Size it for the whole resort, build it in phases

The most expensive mistake in a phased resort is sizing the underground infrastructure for phase one only. Water demand, sewage load and electrical capacity should be calculated from the full planned key count and facility mix, even if only part of it is built at first. Pipes, cables and treatment plant that are undersized for later phases have to be dug up again — usually through landscaping that has just been finished.

The first phase that can open

A common structure is to complete a first cluster of keys plus the core facilities — reception, dining, the main pool — so the resort can operate while later phases continue. This works when:

• the construction zone for later phases can be separated from guest areas, with its own access;
• the first phase has complete, commissioned systems, not temporary connections;
• the pool and its filtration are finished and tested, since a pool is often the reason guests book.

Keep the pools inside the main build

Pools, lagoons and water features are often handed to a separate contractor late in a resort project, and that is where interface problems start: the plant room is too small, the pipe routes clash with other services, and the deck levels don’t meet the buildings. When the same team builds the structures and the pools, the plant room, STP, water storage and electrical room are planned together from the start.

Landscaping last — but planned first

Planting and hardscape are finished last so they aren’t damaged by construction traffic. But paths, levels and drainage for the landscape need to be in the plan from day one, because they depend on the grading done at the very start.

Seeing it in practice

At Jalashay Resort, Panshet, PBJ Infra delivered the retaining and site works, main hall, guest block, villa cottages, infinity-edge pool and landscaping as one contract. Aandra Lakestay Resort near Pune combines two pools, guest cottages and waterfront grounds on a lakeside site.

Planning your resort

PBJ scopes a resort as a phased programme during consultation, with a stage-by-stage cost estimate. Read more about resort construction and the land development work that starts every greenfield resort.

Planning a resort? Talk to PBJ about a resort project →