2024-01-29 08:31:05
Club Med in Val-d’Isère (Savoie), April 8, 2023. FRANçOIS PEYRANNE/CLUB MED
It was just 10 p.m. when a gust of wind rushed into the lounges of Club Med in Val-d’Isère (Savoie). Not five, not ten, but forty Brazilian children set off on a chase in the common rooms of this 216-room Hotel-Club, located at the foot of the ski slopes. There they are, climbing the sofas, rushing through the corridors, galloping up the stairs. Needless to say, it’s mind-blowing. “It’s certain that elsewhere, it wouldn’t work…”, glides, placid, Philippe Sambe, “GO” (for “nice organizer”, the name given to staff in contact with customers), who works at reception. We’re like that at Club Med: there’s always a certain libertarian spirit there.
And yet, the “Bronzés” have changed a lot. This week in January, the Val-d’Isère “Club” is full, and among the 500 customers, half are Brazilian. Ana Paola Aragon, who lives in Sao Paulo, came here for a week with her 13-year-old twins and her husband, who owns a plastics manufacturing company. They paid 15,000 euros for their week, excluding transport. “What we like is that it includes everything. Except the spa treatments, which I go to during the day because I don’t ski”, she explains.
In the salons, we also meet Mariana Vieira, a 43-year-old Brazilian architect, married to a financial director. They came with their three children, following spending a week in London. “We found other parents from the American school in Rio here. We are a group of thirty! » That week, there were also many South Africans, and around a hundred Turks, like Irem Yagmurdereli, a 54-year-old retiree who worked in the oil industry. She lives in Istanbul and spends a week in Val-d’Isère with her daughter Dila, 17, who will begin studies at Columbia University in New York in September.
This globalized and hyper-affluent elite, who come with their families to enjoy the exoticism of the French mountains, has become the core target of Alpine Club Med. A clientele that embodies the upscaling strategy initiated in 2004 by the company, which has made the mountain a strategic priority. It must be said that it is on the peaks that Club Med achieves its best performances. “This is where our premium all-inclusive package brings the most to our guests, especially families”explains Henri Giscard d’Estaing, 67, CEO of this company which has belonged to the Chinese conglomerate Fosun since 2015.
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