this, but I’m not sure what my overall strategy should be. One thing is
certain: I am committed to do whatever it takes ... I love the Club. J’aime
trop le Club.”
Company background and history
Club Mediterranee (often referred to as “the Club”) was the ninth-largest
hotel company in the world in 1986. It was founded by a group of friends
in 1950 as a non-profit sports association. The group was led by Gerard
Blitz, a Belgian diamond cutter and water-polo champion, who, like the
others in the group, loved sports and vacations in scenic seaside locations.
Members slept in sleeping bags in tent villages and took turns cooking
meals and washing dishes. As the size of the association grew, running it
as an informal, loosely organized group became increasingly difficult. In
1954 Blitz invited his close friend, Gilbert Trigano, an active association
member whose family business had been supplying the group with US
Army-surplus tents, to join the association on a full-time basis. Trigano,
who saw commercial potential in the concept, became managing director
and set out to turn the association into a business. By 1985 Club
Mediterranee SA, a publicly owned company traded on the Paris Stock
Exchange, had more than 100 resort villages throughout the world and
hosted more than 800,000 vacationers.
History of the American zone
In 1972 Club Med, Inc., was formed as a US subsidiary of Club
Mediterranee. The subsidiary sold the company’s vacation packages and
operated its resorts in North America, the Caribbean, South America, Asia,
and the South Pacific. What was referred to in Club Med as the “American
zone” comprised the 17 villages highlighted on the map in Figure 5.1.1.
Club Med’s expansion into the Western Hemisphere was not without
difficulty. The company’s first village in the American zone, Buccaneer’s
Creek, located on the Caribbean island of Martinique, developed a “swing-
ing-singles”, sex-oriented reputation when it was first opened in the early
1970s. This image was in stark contrast to Club Mediterranee’s family-ori-
ented image in Europe. Management became so concerned that the village
was temporarily closed; however, despite intensive company efforts to
stamp out the “wild and crazy” reputation, the image persisted.
Gradually, however, the image was changing. By the middle of the
1980s, demographics on Club Med’s clientele revealed the average age to
be 37, the median income to be $39,000, and the average income to be
$54,000. More than 70% were aged 25 to 44, and half were married. More
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