Holiday Inn Club Vacations earned multiple honors at the 2026 ARDA Awards, the vacation ownership industry's premier recognition program, the Orlando-based company confirmed on May 15. The wins spanned individual team members, organizational leaders, and company-wide programs, signaling broad institutional strength rather than a single standout achievement.
For hospitality operators watching how large-scale resort brands manage guest satisfaction and workforce development, the recognition carries practical weight. ARDA — the American Resort Development Association — evaluates entrants on criteria that closely mirror the metrics driving performance across broader hospitality operations: owner and guest experience scores, innovation in service delivery, and structured team development pipelines.
Holiday Inn Club Vacations framed the wins as a reflection of its ongoing commitment to operational excellence and staff investment. That dual focus — pairing guest-facing quality with internal talent programs — is increasingly the standard benchmark for full-service and resort-style properties competing for both loyal customers and skilled labor in a tight employment market.
The brand's approach to recognizing people, programs, and processes together, rather than siloing awards into a single department, points to an integrated management philosophy that hospitality leadership teams across segments have been working to adopt in recent years. Vacation ownership, which blends the demands of hotel operations with the relationship complexity of ownership programs, often serves as a proving ground for hospitality best practices at scale.
For context on how food and beverage programming fits within resort hospitality strategies, Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked how integrated F&B experiences are becoming a key differentiator for vacation ownership and resort brands competing on total guest satisfaction.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
