Club Med is the outlier in all-inclusive travel. It includes qualified instruction, not just equipment — sailing, windsurfing, tennis, trapeze, and at its mountain resorts, ski lessons and lift passes. No other major all-inclusive brand does ski at anything like this scale, across six countries.
Club Med sells something different from everything else here — social not transactional, activity-led not lounger-led, and the only brand in this set where a week in the Alps and a week in the Caribbean come out of the same booking system. It has also moved upmarket deliberately: the old value tier is gone — and what remains starts a band higher than it used to.
Scored across the portfolio. Most Club Med villages are family resorts with an adults-only zone, not adults-only outright, so the couples score reflects the calm-corner model — not a child-free property.
The sport score is a ten because the inclusion is categorically different from its rivals. Competitors include access to a kayak or a tennis court. Club Med includes lessons — taught, structured, in graded groups. That is the whole argument for the brand, and it is why the relaxation score is comparatively low: this isn't a brand built around doing nothing.
A conventional ski holiday means sourcing accommodation, lift passes, ski school, catering and childcare separately: five bookings from four or five suppliers, with lessons and lift passes the two largest line items after lodging. Club Med collapses all of them into one price.
| Included in a ski week | Detail |
|---|---|
| Lift pass | A six-day pass on a classic seven-day package, for every guest aged 4 and over. |
| Group ski and snowboard lessons | Ski from age 4, snowboard from age 8, all ability levels, taught by instructors from the national ski schools, in groups of up to twelve. |
| All meals, open bar, all-day snacking | The standard Club Med food and drink inclusion. |
| Kids clubs, ages 4–17 | Which for a ski trip means childcare and ski school in the same package. |
| 30+ on- and off-slope activities | Snowshoeing, sledding, wellness classes for non-skiers. |
| Evening entertainment | Nightly, performed largely by the resort team. |
Lift passes and lessons are included. Ski and snowboard equipment rental isn't. It is available at extra charge and should be pre-booked through your account before arrival. This is the single most common and most expensive surprise for first-time Club Med ski guests — and it is worth budgeting for from the start.
The mountain portfolio spans six countries — France carries the core with a large Alpine cluster, plus Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Japan and China. Two more mountain resorts are due in 2028: San Sicario, which will be Italy's second Club Med in the mountains, and Tremblant in Canada.
Club Med's staffing structure isn't a branding flourish; it produces a noticeably different resort atmosphere — and it is the thing people either love or find exhausting.
Staff are G.O.s, Gentils Organisateurs; guests are G.M.s, Gentils Membres. G.O.s are multi-skilled by design: the same person may teach a sport in the morning, eat at guests' tables at lunch and perform in the evening show. They dine and socialize with guests instead of working back-of-house — and the village is run by a Chef de Village.
The result is communal and social, not the guest-and-server separation typical of Caribbean all-inclusives. If you want to arrive, be left alone and read on a lounger for seven days, this is the wrong brand and you will feel it by day two. If you want to be pulled into a sailing group and know the staff by name, nothing else does it as well.
One thing follows from that: Club Med is simultaneously a tour operator and a resort manager. It sells flights, transfers and the resort as one contracted package, where most all-inclusive brands are hotel operators selling through third-party tour operators.
Club Med uses a proprietary Trident rating, not stars — and its luxury tier comes in three quite different formats.
Three Trident was the historic value tier and no longer exists — the last three properties converted upward and, from April 2024, Club Med has sold only four-Trident and Exclusive Collection product. Four Trident is now the bulk of the estate, and Five Trident exists essentially only inside the Exclusive Collection.
They are a proprietary Club Med scale, not a hotel-star equivalent, and Club Med's own consumer resort pages display them inconsistently — several show a review score and no Trident marking at all. Use them as a rough guide — not a specification.
The age structure is the single most important practical fact for families — and it splits cleanly at age four.
| Club | Ages | Included? |
|---|---|---|
| Baby Club Med | 4–23 months | No — extra fee, pre-booking required, selected resorts only |
| Petit Club Med | 2–3 | No — extra fee, pre-booking required, selected resorts only |
| Mini Club Med | 4–10 | Yes, included |
| Club Med Teens | 11–13 | Yes, included |
| Club Med Chill Pass | 14–17 | Yes, included |
Ages four to seventeen are included; ages zero to three are surcharged and must be pre-booked — and the baby and toddler clubs are not offered at every village. Note separately that children under four stay free when sharing with an adult — that is an accommodation concession and doesn't make their club free.
The age bands are consistent across Club Med's country sites; what varies by village is which clubs are offered at all, so check availability rather than boundaries.
| Included | The detail that matters |
|---|---|
| All meals and continuous snacking | Multiple venues, buffet plus specialty restaurants, with all-day snack service that is more generous than most of the segment. |
| All-day open bar | Alcoholic and non-alcoholic, included as standard. |
| Taxes and gratuities — and a real no-tipping culture | Materially different from Caribbean all-inclusives where tipping is expected or quietly encouraged. |
| Wi-Fi | Free resort-wide. Premium Wi-Fi is an Exclusive Collection benefit. |
| Sports instruction, not just equipment | Sailing, windsurfing, kayaking, paddleboarding, snorkeling, tennis, archery, fitness and yoga, plus the signature flying trapeze and circus school. |
| Ski lift pass and group lessons | At mountain resorts, always included. |
| Kids clubs, ages 4–17 | Included; under-fours are not. |
| Airport transfers — conditionally | Included when the airfare is booked directly with Club Med. See below. |
Resort pages quantify the activity roster explicitly, splitting it into activities included in your stay and activities on demand — and the two lists are roughly the same length. That split is the mechanism by which premium sports are upcharged, and comparing the two counts is the fastest way to judge a specific village.
| Not included | Notes |
|---|---|
| Ski and snowboard equipment rental | The big one. Lift passes and lessons are in; the gear is not. |
| Premium drinks | Champagne, VSOP and XO spirits, bottled alcohol and premium brands sit outside the open bar. |
| Spa and beauty | All treatments. Exclusive Collection guests get priority booking — not free treatments. |
| Private lessons | Group lessons are included; private golf and private tennis lessons are named as extra cost. |
| Golf green fees | Chargeable even where instruction and practice facilities are included. |
| Excursions | All organized visits, booked through the resort's excursion desk. |
| Childcare under four | Baby Club Med and Petit Club Med both carry a fee and require pre-booking. |
| Room service | Generally an Exclusive Collection suite benefit — not a standard inclusion. |
| Annual membership fee | Unusual for the segment — Club Med charges an annual membership, at a lower rate for under-sixteens. No Caribbean all-inclusive competitor has this. It is a one-off annual charge, not a nightly one — but it is a real line item. |
Club Med's own US FAQ lists horseback riding and diving as additional cost, while some individual resort pages list both among included activities. An introductory session is likely included where the full excursion isn't — but the sources contradict each other, so verify per village. Separately, transfers are included only when you book the airfare through Club Med; book your own flights and they may not be. That condition is widely misreported.
The brand and its culture are French. The ownership hasn't been for over a decade — and the corporate situation changed in 2025 and 2026.
Club Med has been controlled by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun since 2015. The listed vehicle that held it, Fosun Tourism Group, was taken private and delisted from the Hong Kong exchange in March 2025 — so any description of Club Med's parent as Hong Kong-listed is out of date.
In May 2026 Fosun appointed banks for a Hong Kong listing of Club Med itself, targeted for 2026 or 2027 and structured as a spin-off with Fosun retaining control. The earlier narrative about a minority stake sale to a Singaporean buyer appears superseded — no completion was ever confirmed, and a guide shouldn't report that it happened. Exact IPO figures are source-reported — not formally announced.
A counting note, because Club Med's own materials don't agree with each other: its anniversary release says sixty-eight resorts in forty countries, while its 2025 results say sixty-one resorts across twenty-five countries. Both are company figures on different bases. We would describe the estate as roughly sixty to seventy resorts, with about sixty open in any given season since several are seasonal or under renovation.
Club Med moved upmarket deliberately, retiring its value tier in 2024, and the estate now runs from upper mainstream to luxury — though the premium on its top tier is one the company simply doesn't publish.
| Sub-brand or tier | Where it sits |
|---|---|
| Four Trident | Upper mainstream. The bulk of the estate since the three-Trident tier was eliminated. |
| Exclusive Collection Spaces | Premium. A five-Trident enclave inside a four-Trident village. |
| Exclusive Collection Resorts and Villas | Premium to luxury. Whole properties at five Trident, plus the standalone villas and chalet-apartments. |
| Three Trident | Gone. Eliminated in April 2024; if you see it quoted, the source predates the change. |
Club Med publishes what the Exclusive Collection adds — substantially more space, à la carte dining, evening champagne, a dedicated concierge — and publishes nothing about what it costs relative to a four-Trident room, and the Space properties we checked disclose no differential either. So no figure is given here. The two costs we would actually budget for are the ones outside the headline rate entirely: equipment rental on a ski week, and the annual membership.
No figures on this page are quoted by the brands. None of them publishes an official upgrade percentage, so every proportion here is derived from comparing published category rates across properties. Treat a step that buys a different room product — a suite instead of a room, a swim-up instead of a standard — as durable, because the scarcity behind it doesn't move. Treat a step sold as a flat per-night supplement as volatile: as a proportion it widens whenever the base rate falls, in a promotion or in low season, and compresses at peak. Price the equipment rental and the annual membership alongside the rate. Both sit outside it, and neither is small.
You ski, or you want to learn a sport rather than merely borrow the kit for it. Families with children aged four and up get exceptional value, particularly on a ski week where lessons and childcare would otherwise be two separate large bills. It also suits people who want a social resort where staff are part of the week rather than adjacent to it.
You want to be left alone on a lounger for seven days — the G.O. model will feel like being organized; you have a child under four and expected the club to be free. You are booking a ski week and have not budgeted for equipment rental. Or you want a purely adults-only property, which Club Med almost never is.
Lift passes, graded lessons for every ability, childcare and all meals in one price. No other all-inclusive brand bundles graded instruction that way.
A five-Trident enclave inside a four-Trident village keeps the full resort available to you while adding a concierge, private pool and priority booking. Better value than a full Exclusive Collection resort for most travelers.
Two line items outside the headline price catch first-time guests: ski or snowboard rental, and the annual membership fee. Price both before you compare Club Med against a conventional ski week.
Because Club Med competes on instruction rather than on beach and buffet, the category overviews below are a better next read than any single-brand comparison.
Tell us whether it is a ski week or a beach week and what ages are traveling — and we will answer against the specific village.
No. It is the most expensive thing people get wrong about Club Med. Lift passes and group ski and snowboard lessons are always included at mountain resorts. Equipment rental is an extra charge, and it should be pre-booked through your account before you travel — resort-day rental queues are the worst hour of a ski week.
From age four to seventeen, yes. Baby Club Med and Petit Club Med, covering roughly under-fours, carry an additional fee, require pre-booking and aren't offered at every village. Children under four do stay free when sharing with an adult, but that is an accommodation concession — not free childcare. If your child turns four before travel, check whether the village will place them by age at booking or at arrival.
It includes qualified instruction, not just equipment. Competitors include access to a kayak or a tennis court; Club Med includes taught, graded group lessons — sailing, windsurfing, tennis, trapeze, and at mountain resorts, ski lessons from age four and snowboard lessons from age eight, with lift passes. No other major all-inclusive brand does ski at anything like this scale, across six countries. The corollary: if nobody in your party wants to be taught anything, you are paying for something you won't use.
The brand, heritage and resort culture are French — but the ownership isn't. Club Med has been controlled by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun since 2015 — and the listed vehicle that held it was taken private in March 2025. Fosun is now pursuing a separate Hong Kong listing of Club Med itself.
Almost never. Most villages are family resorts with an adults-only Zen zone, typically an adult pool — not adults-only outright. One Caribbean village is confirmed adults-only. If a completely child-free property is the requirement, this is the wrong brand.
Conditionally. Club Med's terms include transfers when the airfare is booked directly through Club Med. If you book your own flights, transfers may not be included — this condition is widely misreported. Price the Club Med airfare against booking flights yourself plus a private transfer; it is often closer than expected.
Yes — and it is unusual for this segment. Club Med charges an annual membership, at a reduced rate for under-sixteens. It is a one-off annual charge, not a nightly one — but it is a real cost that no Caribbean all-inclusive competitor imposes.
