Who decided that the thing stopping people travelling was not money, but choice?
What happens to a country when the holiday is designed so that the visitor never has to leave the compound?
And of every hundred dollars you spend at an all-inclusive, how much do you think actually stays there?
Gerard Blitz opened his first holiday village on a Majorcan beach in 1950 on the theory that what people wanted was not adventure but the removal of every decision — Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch follow that idea all the way to the gated resorts of the present.
The all-inclusive is now worth close to a hundred billion dollars a year. In the Dominican Republic it accounts for more than seventy per cent of hotel rooms and helps generate over forty per cent of GDP. And of every hundred dollars a guest spends, roughly five stays in the local economy. The rest is repatriated to foreign operators, international airlines and global supply chains, along with the food flown in so that nobody has to eat anything unfamiliar. In water-stressed places, guests can use ten times what a local resident uses in a day. In Jamaica there is now a movement against the privatisation of beaches that local people can no longer reach. Afua has just come back from an Arawak village in the Guyanese Amazon where all-inclusive means something entirely different. Peter, who has enjoyed rather more package holidays than he lets on, is not convinced the answer is to take them away from people.
Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm
[0:00] Sun lounger wars at dawn, and the buffet as a way of life
[7:58] Gerard Blitz, a Belgian on a Majorcan beach, and the founding of Club Med
[14:59] A hundred billion dollars a year, and the country where all-inclusives are seventy per cent of the rooms
[16:39] Five dollars in every hundred — where the rest of your money actually goes
[17:54] Ten times the water a local resident uses in a day
[26:47] The beaches in Jamaica that Jamaicans can no longer reach
[31:07] Plantations sold as celebratory places, and what the industry assumes you cannot handle
[34:14] Afua in the Amazon: an all-inclusive of a completely different kind
Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions
Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
","author_name":"Original Legacy Productions"}