“Bubble Economy” and Characteristics of Tourism Business or Service Business Project

Abstract

This paper aims at clarifying characteristics peculiar to projects in tourism business, which require a long period of preparation and a considerable amount of investment. As concrete case, I chose several golf-course development projects around the beginning of the 1990s, the heyday of the so-called “bubble” economy, when resort development mushroomed throughout Japan. It is a noteworthy fact that, in the cases chosen, Sumitomo Bank and Itoman committed themselves in providing substantial amount of capital. The fact is all the more perplex that these projects were sanctioned in such large companies, where very conservative accounting practices and stringent internal control system are firmly established. A close examination of the decision making process reveals two crucial facts. First, unrealized profit relating to the projects or evaluation of it took place prior to examining viability of extending collateral loan. Furthermore, evaluation of collareral was conducted without checking validity of the projected (unrealized) profit. It is all the more surprising to find the absence of “capital gain” throughout the process, a notion heavily criticized in the post-bubble period. The above cases raise, thus, a number of questions in the field of business administration, and are varthy of close scrutiny.