Used to be you went to a Club Med village to get away from the world. Your room had no television set, no telephone, no lock on the door. For drinks, you used beads instead of money.
You dined family style and never discussed business or read a newspaper. You weren`t supposed to care what was happening at your office or anywhere else. Club Med boasted it was an ”antidote to civilization.” When you went to Club Med, you went native.
No more.
Club Med`s newest village-at Opio, 12 miles above Cannes on the French Riviera-provides cable television, a telephone and safe in your room, and a lock on your door. You can buy a newspaper or magazine at the boutique. You can dine at any of four restaurants. You pay for drinks-or anything else-not with beads but with the ultimate symbol of civilization, a credit card. If time is short, you can stay for as little as a day, not even overnight.
And-horrors!-you can bring your business with you: Company training seminars and incentive meetings are not only welcome, but actively pursued. While Club Med`s true vacationers are lolling at the pool, incentive groups may be listening to a sales manager in a function room complete with blackboard, fax machine and audio-visual aids.
Club Med is going upscale and mainstream as it enters its 40th year. Its self-proclaimed aversion to civilization-meaning the cares of everyday life-is fading as fast as communism is in East Europe.
Breaking with tradition
The $60-million village at Opio, opened earlier this year, is the first resort with Club Med`s new look. Several other clubs are being renovated in the new image. In February, the company will go into the cruise business with a brand new ship, Club Med I, the world`s biggest sailing vessel. It expects to finalize a deal early in 1990 to establish a series of villas in the Soviet Union.
Other breaks in tradition: Club Med will sponsor its first professional golf tournament Jan. 11-14 at its Sandpiper village in Florida. It is changing long-established operating traditions, adding specialty restaurants, offering more single-occupancy rooms and allowing guests to stay for shorter periods.
All this is a far cry from what founders Gerard Blitz and Gilbert Trigano envisioned in the summer of 1950, when they opened their first resort on the island of Majorca. There, a staff of five tended to the needs of the first guests, who were housed in surplus army tents. Guests and staff shared the chores, and in that communal spirit Club Mediterranee was born.
Today, the company operates 110 resorts in 33 countries. The clientele, called G.M.s, for gentils membres (nice members), have a median income of $60,000 and no longer help wash the dishes. More than a million of them will take a vacation at a Club Med during the year.
Outdoor sports and exercise are still the center of Club Med life. The Opio village has 15 tennis courts and a nine-hole executive golf course (and opening in June, a full-size 18-hole layout). You can swim in an indoor or outdoor pool and exercise in a large fitness/health center.
And, to be sure, the G.M.s at Opio-as at all other Club Meds-have plenty of opportunity to interact. There are two bars, not one as at most villages. Guests are still seated in tables of eight in the main dining room, but can make reservations for seating of their choice in the other restaurants. Nightly shows are put on by the staff (called G.O.s, gentils organisateurs, as at other villages) and the disco stays open far into the night.
Club concept evolves
The old formula worked well for Club Med, but times are changing.
”Upscale is the story of Club Med,” said chief operating officer Jean-Luc Oizan-Chapon, explaining how the company has evolved. ”Club Med has tried to react to the market. After World War II, people needed freedom of choice, beaches, sand and sea, the sun. . . .
”Today is not the same situation. We don`t change the spirit or concept of Club Med, but people`s needs are different.”
The evolution in the club`s direction is most visible in the North American villages, whose clientele is heavily American. This year, Club Med is completing a $208 million renovation of its villages in this hemisphere that will put them on a par with competing resorts.
More people use their vacations to improve themselves in one way or another, so the Sandpiper (Port St. Lucie, Fla.) village now offers intensive golf and tennis instruction.
Dedicated dive centers, offering deep dives, night dives, and PADI and NAUI certification programs, are found at the Turkoise (Turks and Caicos Islands), Sonora Bay (Mexico) and St. Lucia (British West Indies).
Sonora Bay and Playa Blanca (Mexico) have intensive horseback riding programs, and six villages have a circus workshop where you can learn to ride a trapeze.
Horseback, dive certification and intensive golf programs carry an extra charge, but intensive tennis and diving, and the circus workshop, are part of the basic cost.
All villages in North America but one have two specialty restaurants in addition to the main dining room. All have fitness centers, though none anywhere in the Club Med empire is as large as the one at Opio, which offers massages, skin treatments, Turkish baths and has an indoor heated pool.
Shorter stays possible
People today have less leisure time and are taking shorter vacations, Oizan-Chapon noted, so the club has modified its former one-week-only vacation packages. Long Weekends (Thursday-Sunday) and Mini-Weeks (Sunday-Thursday) are offered at Ixtapa, Playa Blanca, Sandpiper and Paradise Island.
Another plan tied into American Airlines enables vacationers to stay from one to 12 nights or more at any of nine villages. Single rooms are available at no extra charge at some clubs on a space-available basis; others may charge 30 percent extra.
Guest rooms, often small, have been enlarged at some villages, and the newest Club Med in North America, at Huatulco, Mexico, opened in 1988 with rooms that have a large private terrace and a bathroom wrapped in marble. Huatulco has five restaurants.
Club Med`s sun and sex image, mostly an American perception (Europeans have always regarded the villages as family resorts), is fading. Families are more welcome than ever, and to cater to them, Club Med now has 38 Mini Clubs and 13 Baby Clubs. Mini Clubs provide a full day of activities for children 2-11 years of age. Baby Clubs are for toddlers 4-23 months old.
Opio a forerunner
Opio is projected as the forerunner of other upscale villages to be built in the 1990s.
With its superior facilities, Opio charges slightly more than other villages. Opio`s rates are $945 per person per week until April, higher in spring and summer. By comparison, Sandpiper charges $800 to $1,180 a week until April, the higher figures during holiday periods, the lower in January and early February.
The upscale trend also will be visible aboard the company`s first cruise ship, Club Med I.
Scheduled to make its maiden voyage out of Guadeloupe Feb. 10, the new 610-foot, five-masted sailing vessel will have all the usual amenities found on a luxury cruise ship, including a glass-roofed theater, a casino and breakfast in bed, the latter a Club Med first. Club Med I, like the smaller Windstar luxury sailboats, will emphasize water sports, with the ship staying at anchor during the day to permit passengers to waterski, windsurf and snorkel directly from the ship.
The liner will be based in the Mediterranean in the spring and summer and in the Caribbean in the fall and winter. Seven-day cruises will cost $1,440-$2,550 plus air fare.
