How we designed the comprehensive operating model for a mixed-use residential and hospitality resort community in the Dominican Republic before its opening: five service areas, fifteen service functions, and an implementation-ready plan designed to operate from day one.
Yanuna Resort is a mixed-use residential and hospitality community set within the Caribbean’s natural landscape, designed to offer residents and visitors an integrated lifestyle experience. The project faced a fundamental challenge: the need for a structured operating model capable of ensuring the consistent and efficient delivery of its core services.
The complexity was significant. Yanuna is not a conventional resort; it is a large-scale resort community with the functional diversity of a small city. Utilities, maintenance, security, healthcare, resident and guest services—each service area needed to be designed, sized, and governed before the community opened its doors.
The starting point was not a problem to solve, but an opportunity to anticipate. The challenge was to transform operational complexity into a service experience aligned with the resort’s luxury standards. With two high-end hotels within the development, expectations were exceptionally high: the objective was to design the operating model that would make that level of service possible.
“A luxury resort is sold through what people see and sustained by what they don’t. The operating model is what bridges the two.”
The assignment was to build a bespoke operating model, grounded in its reality, resources, and business objectives. To achieve this, we structured the full range of services and defined the processes, resources, and quality standards required for their management.
“The consistency of the framework was the key methodological asset. Applying the same nine dimensions across all fifteen services made it possible to manage it as a system rather than a collection of disconnected functions.”
We structured the analysis around five operational areas: utilities, maintenance, security, healthcare, and resident services, each comprising three specific services. For every one of the fifteen services, we applied a systematic framework based on nine dimensions, ranging from service definition and quality standards to governance models, organizational structures, third-party relationships, and a complete economic assessment covering both capital investment and operating costs.
This common framework enabled more than a deep dive into each service individually. It provided a holistic view of the operation, helping identify which functions should be outsourced and which should be managed internally, uncover dependencies between service areas, and build a consolidated financial model to support informed investment decisions.
A key component of the work involved validating the CAPEX and OPEX estimates already being used by the developers. The value of the exercise lay not only in what was added, but also in what was challenged: assumptions that did not withstand market benchmarking, underestimated cost items, and organizational decisions that required greater precision to become operationally viable.
The result was a fully integrated operating model covering all fifteen services at a level of detail the developers had not previously achieved. For each service, the plan defines exactly what needs to be delivered, how quality should be measured, which functions should be outsourced, and what critical processes and procedures must be in place.
The model includes a complete financial dimension: the CAPEX required to launch each service, recurring operating expenses, potential revenue streams, and the applicable pricing and billing models. This financial layer was one of the most critical elements of the assignment, providing a rigorous and validated economic framework that could be presented to investors, partners, and financial institutions.
The plan is designed to scale. It allows new services to be incorporated, existing ones to evolve as the community grows, and operational structures to adapt to changing demand over time. Beyond the immediate implementation phase, the project has created a long-term decision-making framework for managing operations with consistency and confidence.
“An operating model is only useful if the people implementing it recognize it as their own. That is why every decision was built alongside the Yanuna team: the result is not an external report, but a roadmap designed to be used.”
Barcelona Office
Antoni Bell 2, 4th Floor – C
Sant Cugat del Vallès 08174
+34 93 280 7084
Madrid Office
Alfonso XII 62, 2nd Floor
Madrid 28014
+34 91 048 8455
To stay up to date on the latest trends and key information in our sectors, follow us
Accessibility Tools