Big Interview: Club Med on ‘always innovating and improving’

Travolution caught up with Richard De Villa, Club Med’s marketing director of the UK, Ireland and Nordics, on how the tour operator is continuing to be a pioneer

Having created the all-inclusive concept in the 1950s, the kids club, the buffet and then the finessing of the buffet to a more fine-dining all-inclusive experience with live cooking stations, you wouldn’t be mistaken if you called Club Med a pioneer.

Where you might fall down, is thinking it hasn’t been evolving and pioneering since its inception. It has.

As it rings in its 75^th year later in 2025, Club Med spent 2024 getting its house in order by finalising the upscale of its 70 resorts globally and releasing a plethora of new technology.

It rolled out two new sites. One for its customers on the B2C side of business and a new travel agent portal, with a new engine to power it, on the B2B side.

The new, faster and more efficient B2B portal – which has already seen a 200% increase in usage and adoption since launch in June 2024 – now sees improved functionality on offer to agents, such as comparing multiple results for the same dates without having to click out and back and forth for the same information.

The UX for prioritising workload has also been considered in this rollout, making it easier for agents to see active proposals and active conversations on the homepage of the portal instead of having to click two to three times to retrieve this.  

Technology, all built in-house at head office by a team dedicated to developing new tools for the business sees the brand once again living up to its pioneer status - you won’t find any off-the-shelf solutions or open-source tools here. 

Carried out by the Global Marketing and Digital Tools team, the process for this innovation took a year prior to launch as the firm follows a thorough operation for anything it rolls out.  

This is based on pain points, and agent partner feedback, across all markets. It allows the team to understand how to solve the problem and address the business need. Some markets have small customisations because of this, to ensure locality is met. 

Wanting every day to be a ‘Bluebird’ for its guests, the brand launched its Whatsapp integration in October that has already generated more than 1,000 active conversations and 700 quotes with a bot that can answer 41% of general queries on its own (within the first month and a half of launch and has been continuously growing ever since). Not to mention its new ski comparator tool. 

This agnostic tool, also launched in 2024, is not only a B2C tool but B2B alike as agents can use it to encourage their customers to use it to price up a trip with ski pass, ski lessons, all you can eat and drink, at a superb ski-in-and-ski-out location. 

Nine times out of ten this would cost “quite a substantial amount more” doing it yourself, and not just by a “tiny margin”.

Its main objective is to showcase the USPs of a Club Med ski holiday, in line with its marketing messaging all targeted towards delivering value.*

Richard De Villa  – marketing director for the UK, Ireland and the Nordics – believes this is just another way Club Med keeps its high retention, particularly for a hospitality and tour operator, as travellers realise the value they’re getting and want to return. 

Well, that, and its attention to detail for end-to-end customer experience. Guests easily open an account on check-in and any extras throughout the stay are added with the tap of one’s digital bracelet, making excursions and extras like spa treatments “seamless”.

The new app rolled out last year, took two years in development, but now sees guests have access to “more user-friendly” information.

“You can book your easy arrival. You select your height, your level of skis required, whether you need a helmet, boots etc.

“Doing this for a family, as you can imagine, is tedious, to arrive on a ski holiday then having to sort out gear for a family of four with kids,” De Villa said.

“But, to be able to do it on an app before you even leave is quite a value add.

“The aim is, you check-in, you run to your ski locker, touch your bracelet, and you open to see all your gear already there, and you don’t even have to think or go to the ski shop. So, it’s really improving these touch points.

“For example, if you’re staying in an exclusive collection” – the brand’s most premium resort category – “you can get breakfast room service included in your package and you can book that via the app, or any of the spa services. 

He said: “It’s connecting these data points together.”

All of this new functionality plays an important part in helping Club Med’s Data Factory understand its guests. 

It analyses data of more than one million customers a year which equates to 1.2 billion data points, at roughly five million data points processed a day. 

“Club Med has always been innovative and improving. Our business needs are always focused on improvement.

“Club Med invented the all-inclusive concept in the 1950s and it’s been improving since. How do you really provide the best, all-inclusive customer experience that they will come back year and year again.

“We use the analysis to see which tools need to be developed, which processes need to be improved upon, and it’s having that religious process where if something does not work well or can be optimised, we do it as quickly as possible.”

With plenty of innovations in 2024, De Villa said “the aim is to be a trailblazer” and continue to “massively improve” its end-to-end customer experience in 2025. 

Works are currently underway for an AI system that tackles the operator’s food waste. Following a successful pilot at Club Med Da Balaia in Portugal, the AI technology will be rolled out across several Club Med resorts around the world, in a bid to further the tour operator's sustainability efforts.

*Editor’s note: I have to say: I think it delivers. As an avid and self-proclaimed ski bunny, I put the tool to the test and have to say I was quite impressed. It not only helped our group suss out what we did and didn’t want from our trip from an inspiration point of view, to narrow down our non-negotiables, but it also helped us to see that it was the best way for it to be cost effective.