Mark Warner Resort

In the evenings the indoor rooms of the Kids Club are laid out with camp beds and travel cots for the under 5s to sleep in while their parents have dinner.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1388085/Turkey-breaks-Bodrum-unbeatable-families.html#ixzz1MnaCdSdz

And you know what's funny: Ocean Club had, as any resort/hotel etc, signs everywhere "never leave your child unattended".

As if a good parent needs that reminder.

12 December 2014: Ocean Club

We regret to inform you that Mark Warner no longer have a contract with the Ocean Club and therefore this property has been removed from their Summer 2015 programme with immediate effect.
Our website will be updated shortly to reflect this. 
- See more at: http://www.thevacationcompany.net/news/article.php?newsId=108#sthash.rxpGvPEG.dpuf

Wow... S/ YARD are getting closer to the true culpits at last . Very clever to cut off the Mccons supporters , tighten the net on and watch them squirm! The previous Mexian standoff between Mark Warners Murat v/s Mccanns ("We did'nt want you to know about the sedation issue") is finally comming to to an end !.

Silver Shuffle wrote:

12 December 2014: Ocean Club

We regret to inform you that Mark Warner no longer have a contract with the Ocean Club and therefore this property has been removed from their Summer 2015 programme with immediate effect.
Our website will be updated shortly to reflect this. 
- See more at: http://www.thevacationcompany.net/news/article.php?newsId=108#sthash.rxpGvPEG.dpuf

The CURSE of the McCanns strikes, yet again.

They even, helpfully show the Tapas restaurant and the pool and the pool reception, and in doing so, the distance . . . .

PeterMac wrote:

Silver Shuffle wrote:

12 December 2014: Ocean Club

We regret to inform you that Mark Warner no longer have a contract with the Ocean Club and therefore this property has been removed from their Summer 2015 programme with immediate effect.
Our website will be updated shortly to reflect this. 
- See more at: http://www.thevacationcompany.net/news/article.php?newsId=108#sthash.rxpGvPEG.dpuf

The CURSE of the McCanns strikes, yet again.

They even, helpfully show the Tapas restaurant and the pool and the pool reception, and in doing so, the distance . . . .

Also shows a pic of the big table over in the corner of pic 3 - looks like it seats 10.

As we posted a long time ago

"PdL - What a place. Why does anyone holiday there?
PdL - where families take it in turn to vomit each night, dog packs pursue and bite joggers, guests fall off catamarans, damage tendons playing tennis, have shaving accidents and stagger around apartments bleeding, domestic appliances need repair, shutters jam, baby monitors won't function at restaurants, travel cots can't be assembled.. sounds like THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.

It's populated by black heroin addicts, people who rob apartments, gypsies who steal scrap and wood, scruffy moustachioed lurers of children, bogus charity collectors, suspicious street musicians, men lurking near phone booths, glasses man lurking in stairwells, blond men suspiciously lurking outside apartments, soothing couples entering apartments without permission, mysterious gangs of cleaners, men taking photographs of children on beaches... And to top it all, you have to queue for a table booking."

And since then we know, because the McCanns have told us, that the cleaners are not to be trusted, the gardeners are very suspect, the child minders and creche workers get sacked, the place teems with faceless men, or with men who look exactly like your own husband who every night cart abducted children round still in their pyjamas in the freezing cold, and dogs which cannot tell the difference between Sea Bass, dead piglets, and dirty nappies indicate the presence of death everywhere . . .  (Oh, hang one, that's not QUITE correct, is it.)
And to cap it all British Police officers turn up regularly with dogs and helicopters, and start digging in patches of rough ground, telling people they are looking for dead children !

They do, however, do a good line in free holidays, three months is the record so far.  Just make a small complaint and it all happens automatically. It can be a simple complaint that someone went into your apartment which you can deliberately leave open, and you can even boast that "Nothing of Value was taken".  
That is quite enough for MW.  They spring into action and grant your every wish.  Even your whole family is invited, and His Excellency the Ambassador pops over for lunch every so often.

Goodness me, I have been there several times and I hardly recognise your description, Peter Mac.  Apart from one severely disabled beggar, who could never have managed to climb up to a sliding window, let alone climb out without touching anything and carrying a chloroformed nearly four year old, most of the people we saw were having a lovely holiday and enjoying the beach and beautiful weather.  How unobservant we must have been.

PeterMac @ 4.12 pm

...and the police are f......... t.........!

PeterMac wrote:As we posted a long time ago

"PdL - What a place. Why does anyone holiday there?
PdL - where families take it in turn to vomit each night, dog packs pursue and bite joggers, guests fall off catamarans, damage tendons playing tennis, have shaving accidents and stagger around apartments bleeding, domestic appliances need repair, shutters jam, baby monitors won't function at restaurants, travel cots can't be assembled.. sounds like THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.

It's populated by black heroin addicts, people who rob apartments, gypsies who steal scrap and wood, scruffy moustachioed lurers of children, bogus charity collectors, suspicious street musicians, men lurking near phone booths, glasses man lurking in stairwells, blond men suspiciously lurking outside apartments, soothing couples entering apartments without permission, mysterious gangs of cleaners, men taking photographs of children on beaches... And to top it all, you have to queue for a table booking."

And since then we know, because the McCanns have told us, that the cleaners are not to be trusted, the gardeners are very suspect, the child minders and creche workers get sacked, the place teems with faceless men, or with men who look exactly like your own husband who every night cart abducted children round still in their pyjamas in the freezing cold, and dogs which cannot tell the difference between Sea Bass, dead piglets, and dirty nappies indicate the presence of death everywhere . . .  (Oh, hang one, that's not QUITE correct, is it.)
And to cap it all British Police officers turn up regularly with dogs and helicopters, and start digging in patches of rough ground, telling people they are looking for dead children !

They do, however, do a good line in free holidays, three months is the record so far.  Just make a small complaint and it all happens automatically. It can be a simple complaint that someone went into your apartment which you can deliberately leave open, and you can even boast that "Nothing of Value was taken".  
That is quite enough for MW.  They spring into action and grant your every wish.  Even your whole family is invited, and His Excellency the Ambassador pops over for lunch every so often.

Thanks PeterM I don't recall seeing that before.   Is it any wonder the residents are up in arms about it all?  

Ashwarya wrote:Goodness me, I have been there several times and I hardly recognise your description, Peter Mac.  Apart from one severely disabled beggar, who could never have managed to climb up to a sliding window, let alone climb out without touching anything and carrying a chloroformed nearly four year old, most of the people we saw were having a lovely holiday and enjoying the beach and beautiful weather.  How unobservant we must have been.

As were the Tapas 9 apparently because IIRC it all seemed so safe, safe enough to leave all their children alone most nights of the holiday?

At last... an interesting development but, of course, this will further devastate the local economy.

What next?  Will the Vatican announce they've pulled out of Nossa Senhora de Luz?

plebgate wrote:

Ashwarya wrote:Goodness me, I have been there several times and I hardly recognise your description, Peter Mac.  Apart from one severely disabled beggar, who could never have managed to climb up to a sliding window, let alone climb out without touching anything and carrying a chloroformed nearly four year old, most of the people we saw were having a lovely holiday and enjoying the beach and beautiful weather.  How unobservant we must have been.

As were the Tapas 9 apparently because IIRC it all seemed so safe, safe enough to leave all their children alone most nights of the holiday?

...and then there was the pink machine that threw up all sorts of stories - off the top of my head - the bloke with the circle on his T shirt who broke into an apartment while the parents were at home (not in PDL but what the hell, the average UK reader doesn't know the arse from the elbow of the Algarve)_....and the woman who took her child into a bar with her mother, thought her drink had been spiked and thought she'd escaped having her child abducted.

PeterMac wrote:

Silver Shuffle wrote:

12 December 2014: Ocean Club

We regret to inform you that Mark Warner no longer have a contract with the Ocean Club and therefore this property has been removed from their Summer 2015 programme with immediate effect.
Our website will be updated shortly to reflect this. 
- See more at: http://www.thevacationcompany.net/news/article.php?newsId=108#sthash.rxpGvPEG.dpuf

The CURSE of the McCanns strikes, yet again.

They even, helpfully show the Tapas restaurant and the pool and the pool reception, and in doing so, the distance . . . .

It seems that, as yet,  MW haven't pulled the details from their website and picture no.2 here http://www.thevacationcompany.net/destinations/oceanclub.php gives the lie to any claim that the rear entrance of 5A can be seen from the Tapas Bar area.

It's only been this week that I think I've figured out -

- what a Mark Warner holiday is...

(being foreign and all)

Is it like an English version of Club Med?

I had a few days at the one in New Caledonia -

- many years ago as a young teenager.

I think that's the only time I've ever been to a resort -

(from memory the Mars bars in the shop were USD$4.50 each)

- faintly glamorous people from Sydney and the Ivory Coast...

- communal eating and lots of help with the children.

So if Mark Warner is a similar set-up, then I get it.


My thoughts only.

As can be seen from this Wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Med Club Med has had a chequered history, missb, and of late has become more acceptable to England's braying chattering classes.  

MW's concept is not dissimilar but, among its various destinations, the 'Ocean Club' has no actual complex in or around which its guests stay and/or gather for daily/nightly entertainment and, as can be seen from the McCanns' holiday album, attracts a clientele who aren't remotely glamorous.

Package holidays are my idea of hell and I certainly wouldn't want to linger long in any place that refers to its guests as 'GMs'  

ultimaThule -

I was a lovelorn creature being dragged off to boarding school -

- so no 'crazy sign dances' or bead-twirling GMs for me...

...not then, or now... I see the Club Royale (!) closed in 2001 -

in 'very unfriendly circumstances', apparently.


I think the Noumea stopover was part of a UTA deal -

- they flew the South Pacific in stainless steel coloured DC10s.

Noumea has an impressive old colonial cathedral :

(built by convict labour)



The clocks on it look like coloboma'd eyes to me...!


My opinion only.

I now hope that with the new demise of Mark Warners at Ocean Club (RIP) at last any confidentiality agreements that may have been signed by their staff, including Catriona, Charlotte and Amy etc will now be null & void and they can finally spill the beans about the Mccann/Mark Warner charade.

As it doesn't appear to be the case that Mark Warner Holidays has gone out of business, universe, any agreements of the nature you've mentioned will continue to hold until such time as stated therein.

deleted

Interesting read from bygone days.


By MATTHEW GWYTHER Wednesday, 01 August 2001

THE FABULOUS WARNER BOYS

THE FABULOUS WARNER BOYS - The shirts worn by their reps may be flowery, but the founders of upmarket package holiday pioneers Mark Warner are distinctly hard-headed. While rivals struggle, MW's sun keeps shining: its ad campaigns are minimal, its celeb-c

The shirts worn by their reps may be flowery, but the founders of upmarket package holiday pioneers Mark Warner are distinctly hard-headed. While rivals struggle, MW's sun keeps shining: its ad campaigns are minimal, its celeb-clientele faithful, and its profit margins dwarf the travel industry average. How do they do it? Matthew Gwyther finds out
As the nation that invented package holidays, the British spend a lot of time whingeing about them. Whether it be fretting that the food is too adventurous, the lager too weak, that there's 'a lizard in the bidet' or simply that they've been beaten to the poolside loungers by their fellow Europeans, Brits certainly know how to moan while abroad.
The UK package holiday industry would love to live off repeat business but is forced to spend vast sums on marketing to attract trade in the first place. Then, each summer, margins are slashed in a last-minute price-cutting frenzy. The big travel companies struggle to create desirable brands but, if quizzed, delayed and disgruntled punters often aren't sure whether they're jetting off with Going Places, Lunn Poly or YugoTours.
On a Mark Warner holiday, however, it would seem that the odd grumble is drowned out by sighs of contentment, for, in contrast with other mainstream operators, Mark Warner has a repeat business/direct recommendation rate of 75% - almost unheard of.
MW customers know exactly what they're buying into - an up-market, all-inclusive, activity-based 'club' of a rather more sophisticated variety than the liquid, late-night hedonism of 18/30. There are Mark Warner junkies who have been to all nine of the operator's summer resorts and can go on about how the swell at Altinel in Turkey affects the water skiing or how the softness of the astroturf tennis courts at Lemnos, Greece, helps dodgy knees. They're not customers, they're disciples. (One such follower, Sara Campbell, a 28-year-old PR executive, expressed regret to MT that MW was now doing visible advertising: 'I feel so protective about my little holiday,' she moaned. 'I don't want the wrong people to know about it.') 
 


Such levels of devotion mean, for example, that the whole of its winter ski programme - 15,000 guests bringing in pounds 25 million - is sold with an advertising budget of pounds 50,000. This may be hardly enough to buy a fur coat and a round of drinks in St Moritz, but that small outlay achieved a 97% occupancy rate last season.

So who is Mark Warner? A Brit-based relative of the US entertainment clan? Or, as per the rumour, a reclusive Greek? Well, neither of these.
Actually, MW himself doesn't exist - the Warner part was a step-parent's surname. Mark Warner was founded some 27 years ago in a small chalet in Verbier by Mark Chitty and Andy Searle. The pair had been at school together in Sussex and Searle's late father had created MFI. Both were relatively clueless business studies students in 1974 but knew they preferred the piste to the lecture hall. It didn't take a genius to establish that telling your mates you'd just been on a 'Chitty holiday' wouldn't drum up much business, so Mark Warner it became.
In their first year they attracted 500 guests to the Alps and made no money. (Chitty says they made no real profits until year 16; Searle's deep pockets kept them going.) But they were thoughtful and determined, and they listened to their customers' desires. In the late 1970s they were the first company to introduce 'ski hosting', in which guests ski as a group under the guidance of a host. In 1982 they added their first summer venues, beginning in Corfu. The winter idea of a relaxed and convivial but not too boisterous party atmosphere prevailed.
Things really started progressing in the mid-80s, when they introduced their now award-winning Kids' Clubs, which took children off the hands of their long-suffering parents for part of the day. 'I suppose the way we developed the business matched what we were up to personally,' says Chitty, 'going from singles to being couples, to having families and kids. We knew we were taking more and more families and needed to do something for them.'
The operator's attraction to families with small children is immense and this summer MW is employing a total of 223 nannies across its resorts.
Families make up 60% of the clientele and MW has become highly popular with divorced and single parents, for whom looking after small children alone can prove trying. As a MW nanny, you'll get free flights, three free meals a day and half-price bar drinks, but you won't get rich. Last year they were paying qualified NNEBs pounds 100 a week. (Chitty and Searle now have a total of seven children between them but, sensibly, they take their holidays elsewhere.) You start humble, but then a lot of MW's senior talent began at the bottom.
For example, Nigel Ragg, the group marketing manager, came as a ski guide in 1981, went away to found his own business, sold it and then returned in the late '90s.
The client total is expected to top 50,000 in 2001, and MW makes a margin of about 10% net before tax, compared with an industry norm of 1% to 3%.
With so much included in the basic price, these holidays do not come cheap. One father wrote MW out a cheque for pounds 22,000 to cover the six weeks that his family of four stayed in the Punta Licosa resort south of Naples last year. And there's no shortage of celebs eager to wield the plastic for the MW fortnight. Recent guests include Dawn French, Ian Hislop, Harriet Harman, Jo Wiley, Martin Bashir and Patsy Palmer.
Its clients are hardly classic package fodder. They are almost totally ABC1 and mostly in the 30 to 45 age bracket, 76% coming from professional backgrounds in southern England, often with a combined household income 'north of pounds 100,000', according to Chitty. These types spend freely in the bars and beauty parlours - one of the few things that costs real money on a MW holiday.
This is not, however, to say that singles are neglected. There's no question that the germ for what Mark Warner has now become can be found in its French competitor Club Med, the singles destination par excellence. The all-inclusive, activity-based Club Med holiday was pioneered by Serge Trigano in Majorca in 1950. Trigano died in February this year at the age of 80. No less a figure than the French prime minister Lionel Jospin marked his passing by saying 'he was an innovative and dynamic entrepreneur who contributed enormously to the democratization of leisure'.
Club Med was once the last word in holiday chic as the 'gentle members' got into their hearty activities while paying for their drinks with strings of beads. Money was too brash and vulgar a commodity to have knocking about these sandy paradises. Club Med became known as a reliable provider of the three 'S's - 'sun, sex and sand'. Indeed, some of its Caribbean resorts, especially Martinique, were thought to major rather too much on the middle 's'. 'Throughout the States, that resort was known as the place where you went to get shagged,' says Chitty. This is not to say that male/female coupling is discouraged at MW. On the notice board of the tele-sales floor at the Kensington HQ is a column titled 'pulling chance' next to each resort's name. The more babies on site, the lower the score.
However, as Mark Warner's star has risen so the outlook for Club Med has become more cloudy. Despite the arrival of Euro Disney whiz Philippe Bourguignon four years ago, Club Med has had to issue a brace of profit warnings as it tries to recreate itself as a broader-based leisure group.
Club Med is, of course, much bigger than Mark Warner, having 109 resorts in 40 countries compared with the British firm's 25 resorts in five countries.
'What's interesting for us, though, is that our brand is far bigger than the company,' says Chitty. 'The future potential for Mark Warner is much larger than we are today.'
MW gets a steady stream of offers from large tour operators and came very close to agreeing terms to sell the company about two years ago.
It got a long way down the line with Thomas Cook, which owns Club 18/30.
The founding pair were near to pocketing 'not far off pounds 50 million' when the suitors were themselves part-bought by the German giant Preussag; that scuppered the deal. 'It put us right off, and it put them off,' says Chitty.
Despite having virtually doubled its turnover in the past four years, MW is fairly cautious when it comes to expansion. It passed up on the North American skiing market and so avoided getting powder-burned, as many rival operators did, with Brits declining a 10-hour flight to get a week on the slopes. Its two new departures from the core brand are the acquisition of the Pizza Express franchise for France and running bars and restaurants in the Alps. The French have been slow to take the Veneziana, the Four Seasons and the chocolate fudge cake to their hearts, but it can only be a matter of time.

I understand Thomas Cook are taking it over.
And one of the main players recently said
"“I really cannot comment. One day I would love to break my silence”.
which certainly sounds like a super-inaudible.
“It would be good to hear whether these people have been sworn to silence - and if so under what compulsion and by whom”.

Deleted as I made a complete db when trying to edit this post - and I haven't had so much of a sniff of mulled wine today.

The information came from the MW switchboard.

(tries again)

That's interesting.  Were you able to ascertain whether Thomas Cook are planning to have the 'complex' up and running for the summer season 2015 as it doesn't appear that they're taking bookings on their website:
http://www.thomascook.com/destinations/portugal/algarve/praia-da-luz/ocean-club-and-waterside-village-apartments/

It seems to me that the particular 'main player' you've mentioned should realise that s/he only has a finite number of days to do what they love and, if they leave it too long, they may never get the pleasure of breaking their silence.  

Fwiw, I believe that the provisions within the Wardship may have been used inappropriately on more than the one occasion which was made public.in 2008.