How Club Med got here
Guests slept in rented canvas tents, washed in communal blocks, ate off American army-surplus plates and paid for their drinks with coloured beads worn as a necklace. That was the first Club Med, and the company that grew out of it is the reason the rest of this category exists.
Founded 1950 · Alcúdia, Mallorca, Spain · Last reviewed August 2026
- 1950
Tents at Alcúdia
Gérard Blitz opens the first village on 4 June, on Mallorca. Guests sleep in rented canvas tents with very little electricity or running water, wash communally, and eat at long shared tables off American military-surplus plates and cutlery. Sport and the evening gathering are the entertainment. Around 2,400 people reportedly come that first summer, two weeks at a time, with bed, board and activities in one price.
- 1955
Out of the Mediterranean, almost immediately
Tahiti, five years in, despite the name. The company has never been especially Mediterranean since.
- 1957
Leysin, and the beads
The first mountain village opens in Switzerland, which matters more than it sounds: it proves a village can organise skiing, instruction, meals and entertainment as well as it organises a beach. The same year, guests start buying coloured plastic beads and wearing them as necklaces, with the barman removing the right ones for a drink.
- 1960s
Rothschild, and the map
The carefree atmosphere concealed some fairly carefree accounting, and an early rescue arrives when Baron Edmond de Rothschild visits a village, likes it and invests. Israel, Morocco and the French Caribbean follow.
- 1967
The Mini Club
Organised childcare arrives, with structured activities for children while the adults do something else. It reads as ordinary now. At the time it was the thing that let a communal sports club keep its members once they had children, and every kids' club in this category descends from it.
- 1978
Les Bronzés
The French comedy, released in English as French Fried Vacation, sends up village life, the relentlessly cheerful staff and the organised group everything. The troupe knew the material first-hand, having sometimes performed shows in exchange for stays. It sold around 2.3 million cinema tickets in France and fixed Club Med in the national imagination, which the company reportedly did not enjoy for some years.
- 1983
Punta Cana, before Punta Cana
Club Med opens in a Dominican resort region that barely exists yet, and says it took part in developing the airport infrastructure needed to get people there. That puts it two years ahead of Barceló and eight ahead of RIU in the place all of them ended up.
- 2004
Reinventing the thing it invented
The simplicity that was the product in 1950 had become the problem by 2000: travellers wanted private bathrooms, air conditioning and serious food, and the competition offered them. From around 2004 the company closes its lower-standard villages and rebuilds as an upscale family resort business. Tents and shared showers become ski chalets, private villas, spas and five-trident luxury areas, which is about as complete a reversal as a brand can attempt while keeping its name.
- 2015
Fosun
After a long takeover contest, the Chinese conglomerate Fosun takes control. The brand stays culturally French and headquartered in Paris, but its ownership now reflects where a great deal of travel demand and investment comes from.
What the dates leave out
What it was actually for
Blitz was a water-polo champion, a resistance fighter and an aid worker who had helped concentration-camp survivors recover. The first village was built on that: somewhere people of different nationalities, religions and classes could live together, play sport and step outside the divisions of postwar Europe for a fortnight. His line for it was that the purpose of life is to be happy, the place to be happy is here, and the time to be happy is now.
The tent supplier took over
The tents came from Gilbert Trigano, whose family sold camping equipment. When Blitz ran short of money, Trigano got progressively more involved, and eventually ran the company. It is an unusually clean division of labour: Blitz supplied the philosophy and the atmosphere, Trigano supplied the commercial machinery that turned it into an international business.
Popularised, not invented
Club Med often calls itself the inventor of the all-inclusive holiday. The precise version is that it popularised the modern resort form of it worldwide. British holiday camps such as Butlin's had bundled a bed, meals and entertainment before 1950. What Club Med added was the exotic beach, the international membership, the communal village culture and a holiday you could take without your wallet.
Gentle members and gentle organisers
The company built its own vocabulary and still uses it. A guest is a G.M., gentil membre. A member of staff is a G.O., gentil organisateur. The manager is the chef de village, and a resort is a village. The point was to avoid the hotel relationship between customer and servant: G.O.s ate, danced and played with guests as well as doing their actual jobs, and were hired for charisma as much as for skill.
Crazy Signs
Simple choreographed group dances, led from the front, copied by everyone. They work as a language: people with no shared words can still do the same steps. They are still running, and there is an official playlist for them.
Everything left at home
Shared tables, first names, a swimsuit and a sarong, and accommodation simple enough that a wealthy guest and a schoolteacher got much the same fortnight. Class and job were meant to stay at home with the wallet. It also acquired a reputation for holiday romance, which the film of 1978 did nothing to discourage.
The trident
Poseidon most obviously, and the company also links it to Shiva's trident and to ideas of balance, passion and exploration. Club Med rates its villages in tridents rather than stars, which is why a five-trident village is the top of the range.
It got to Mallorca first
This is the part the rest of the category tends to skip. Club Med pitched its tents on Mallorca in 1950. RIU bought its first hotel on the island in 1953, Meliá leased its first in 1956, Barceló opened its first in 1962 and Iberostar not until 1979. A Belgian with army-surplus plates demonstrated on their beach what a packaged holiday village could be, several years before any of the four Mallorcan families were in the hotel business at all.
Everything we read on Club Med
Where the company's own materials disagree with each other, we print both readings rather than choosing the tidier one.