King of the club reps

Interview with Andy Tidy, managing director of Club 18-30

At the ripe old age of 42, Andy Tidy still likes to party. But he had to rip up the rulebook to join his customers on a sun, sea and sex Club 18-30 holiday in Ibiza this year.
"I took a group of friends out there in May," he says. "They varied in age from 27 to 62. We had special dispensation - they stuck us all on the top floor of the hotel."

A keen mountain cyclist, Tidy had a vigorous week. "We biked all day and partied all night," he says.

A spiky-haired, compact character in a tight T-shirt and trendy trousers, Tidy runs Britain's most successful youth tour operator. Club 18-30 is taking 105,000 sun seekers away this year, generating a turnover of more than £35m.

For Tidy, it has been a peculiar year. The events of September 11 sent shockwaves through the travel industry, causing thousands of nervous holidaymakers to defer bookings. Club 18-30 was not hit as badly as its rivals, as its hedonistic customers faced down the threat of terrorism.
"If there's a recession or anything else, it affects us much less," says Tidy. "Our customers don't care - they'll go on holiday even if they can't afford it."

Since Christmas, bookings have soared, thanks to the "Maz effect". A fly on the wall series, Club Reps, followed Club 18-30's young staff in a Greek resort, Faliraki, as they herded thousands of drink-fuelled, sexually charged young Britons on lewd nightly bar crawls. Moody resort manager Marie Slater, known as Maz, became an instant tabloid star.
The ITV series was shown on Thursday evenings, with an instant effect, says Tidy: "Every Friday, our sales would double on last year. It took us right back to where we would have been without September."

While Club Reps inspired thousands of potential customers, it appalled moral commentators. MPs including Ann Widdecombe and Norman Baker voiced outrage at the youngsters' orgiastic behaviour, while "traditional values" groups such as Mediawatch and Family and Youth Concern expressed horror at the depravity of the "island of sin".

Even the tabloids were shocked at the "sleazy sun and sex show" and a spate of drunken rapes fuelled fears that the programme's depiction of easy promiscuity was attracting predatory men.
Tidy angrily brushes aside fears of sexual attack. "If you talk to the Foreign Office, they'll tell you there have been less attacks in Faliraki this year than last year," he says. "When people say there's a crime wave in Faliraki, it's a lie. It's not even stretching the truth - it's a lie."

Tidy is scornful of anxious moral hand-wringing, which he sees as a jealous attack on the young by the old: "I think there's a lot of double standards in British society in terms of morals. We love it all as a race. People love to have a go at youth in general. It really, really annoys me - it always has done."

For Tidy, Club 18-30's activities are all "innocent fun". Since he started work for the company as a resort rep in 1984, he reckons the younger generation has improved immeasurably.
"People going away with us are now much nicer than when I was repping. Whether that's because of the way the world is, I don't know," he says. "They've all got to pay for their education now - they've got all these stresses and strains. We've had a huge change in youth."

But what about Club 18-30's habit of egging on binge drinking? In Faliraki, reps encouraged groups of lads to drink from a £100 "fishbowl" filled with a bright blue liquid - containing seven full bottles of spirits. Then there was the "battle of the sexes" in which girls and boys are split up, plied with drinks and then brought together, with reps leading then in primitive, sexually explicit chants.

Tidy says many such stories are exaggerated, although he admits this can work in Club 18-30's favour commercially. "A certain amount of hype is good for the brand. To turn around and deny we do anything and everything would not be helpful."

'Parents are not stupid'

"Parents are not stupid," he says. "They know what kids get up to. We've been going since 1965, so a lot of them have been on Club 18-30 as well."

Club 18-30's parent company, Thomas Cook, has been under German ownership since 2000. So what do the group's masters in Frankfurt make of its uniquely British foibles?
Tidy spent dull afternoons last year going through flipchart presentations on Club 18-30's success with his suited bosses in airless German offices. He convinced them the business deserved special treatment - it needed to be autonomous.
Thomas Cook's overriding strategy is to build gobal brands - it aims for economies of scale through group-wide purchasing of hotels, resort tours and air tickets. Club 18-30 sits outside - because all concerned agree its guests need separate accommodation from the rest.
"They could have just assimilated us but the brand would have died," says Tidy. "We're run to a very different business model from any other tour operator in the group."

Tidy shudders at the thought of putting his guests in hotels alongside customers from Thomas Cook's German arm: "If you stuck Germans in with English, you'd be asking for trouble. There are certain nationalities we can easily mix with - the Dutch and the Scandinavians are OK. But we can't really share with the French or the Germans."

Like many of the business's management team, Tidy began at the bottom. At the age of 23, he chucked in his job as a clerk with Barclays Bank to become a Club 18-30 rep in Ibiza. "I only intended to do it for one season," he recalls.
He liked the idea of a high-energy lifestyle: "I have to be doing something all the time - I'm full of nervous energy. As a rep, you live on three hours' sleep."

Four weeks into the season, however, Tidy learned the down side of the job in the worst possible way. At a party in one of the resort's hotels, he was dancing with a girl who suddenly began suffering breathing difficulties. As the girl's friend rushed off to find an asthma inhaler, Tidy took her outside to find a seat. Moments later, she collapsed and stopped breathing. Rembering his safety training, Tidy tried to resuscitate her while waiting for an ambulance. But by the time she got to hospital, she had died.
"I had to tell her friend," recalls Tidy. "In that situation, you either cope or you fall to pieces."

More than 5,000 people apply to be Club 18-30 reps each year. Tidy says: "It's not a holiday - you will deal with anything you can expect to come across in an entire lifetime."

Club 18-30 has made some changes to "keep up to date". Organised bar crawls are out, to the relief of Spanish and Greek police.
"You have to do things that are right for a particular time and season," says Tidy. "We talk to the police and to the mayors. If there are things they want us to do, we'll do it."

In the holiday industry, Club 18-30 was one of the success stories of the 1990s - its annual customers rose from 20,000 to 100,000 during the decade. Can it last? Or will hectic holiday hedonism go out of fashion?
"It's not trendy in the first place," argues Tidy. "We've never tried to make it high fashion. If it was all trendy, trendy, it would have gone out of fashion. It's basically mainstream in terms of its acceptability. The only way we're ever going to get into trouble is by pretending to be something we're not."

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