Family firm, health resort and industrial colony: The grand hotel and mineral springs at Mondariz Balneario, Spain, 1873-1932

摘要

There is a considerable literature on histories of family businesses, but very little dealing with the tourism and hospitality sector, despite growing recognition of its importance. This case study of a Spanish mineral springs resort between the 1870s and the 1930s sets the trajectory of Mondariz Balneario, Galicia, a family-run spa hotel with an elite clientele, in national and international context. It seeks to explain the resort's inter-generational success in terms of amenity, paternalism, imaginative publicity and networking, and a conscious quest for what would later be called sustainability, with added ingredients of Galician cultural patriotism and integration into the wider regional economy.