Club Med either wholly owns or operates nearly eighty all-inclusive resort villages in holiday locations around the world.

The original villages were simple: members stayed in unlit straw huts on a beachfront, sharing communal washing facilities.

In the early 1970s the club had bought from her owner Claude Lelouche the famous revolutionary three-mast sailing boat Vendredi 13, installed 4 berths and a bath-room, and based her at the Buccaneer's Creek village in Martinique for one-day to several day cruises.

In the 1990s, the club's fortunes declined as competitors copied its concepts and holidaymakers demanded more sophisticated offerings.

[citation needed] In 1997, the shareholders dismissed the Triganos and replaced them with Philippe Bourguignon, former CEO of Novotel USA.

In 2004, the hotel group Accor became the largest shareholder, but it sold most of its stake in 2006, announcing that it wished to refocus on its core businesses.

In February 2015, Fosun International Ltd.'s Gaillon Invest II and The Silverfern Group finalized a takeover deal of Club Méditerranée S.A.[4] The acquisition culminated a bidding war that began in May 2013, which was conducted by Gaillon, a special investment vehicle used by Fosun, to execute its bidding for Club Med.

Gaillon Invest's chairman, Jiannong Qian, believes that Chinese ownership of the company is crucial to tap into China's huge population of potential tourists.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 'La Chinoise' (1967), the character Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) talks about his father who had fought Germans in the war, now ran Club Med resort working along the lines of concentration camps.

The phrase "Club Med- a cheap holiday in other people's misery" appeared as a Situationist slogan, written in graffiti in Paris, May 1968.

In the movie, a paradise resort for young people full of sex, drugs and rock and roll become targets of a deranged killer.