resulting in major recruiting drives in large US and Canadian cities. Based
on a substantial increase in guest-satisfaction ratings among American
zone villages, this policy was judged to be a success: in Jacky’s view, it met
the need for North American GOs while retaining the international flavor
of the Club.
Some Club Med managers, however, voiced concern over continuing
problems rooted in ethnic differences. Because the number of GOs
recruited from Europe was much larger than that from North America, and
the turnover rate for European GOs was roughly half that for American
GOs, the number of European village chiefs and chiefs of service was dis-
proportionately high.* (Table 5.1.2 shows the approximate ethnic composi-
tion of village chiefs in the American zone and chiefs of service throughout
the company.)
Finally, there had been problems at times with some of the company’s
personnel policies. In the 1970s, decisions concerning all GOs throughout
the world were centralized in the personnel department at Paris head-
quarters. One of Club Mediterranee’s long-established policies had been to
rotate GOs to different villages every six months. A company tradition was
to bring the GOs to the home base in Paris at the end of each season so they
could visit headquarters, reestablish old friendships, and find out where
they would be assigned the next season. By 1977 the number of GOs had
grown to more than 5,000 and this tradition had become a logistical night-
mare. Consequently, it was stopped. To relieve the pressure on the person-
nel department created by the greater number of company villages and
their wider geographic dispersion, a 1985 reorganization established four
The recruitment and internal market domains 339
*“Chief of the Village” was the equivalent of a general manager, in American hotel
parlance. Each village chief had seven assistants, called “chiefs of service”, who
managed specific functions such as sports, dining, entertainment, and so on. The
chiefs of service managed the GOs in their functional areas.Table 5.1.2 Ethnic composition of village chiefs and chiefs of service, 1986
summer seasonChiefs of the village Chiefs of service
Nationality (American zone) (worldwide)French 13 1006
Other European 1 224
Moroccan 1 39
North American (US and Canada) 1 52
Australian/New Zealander 0 5
Other 1 143
Total 17 1469