The All-inclusive Aristocrat
How to imagine a better world from your sun lounger
Imagine what it would be like to be an aristocrat: all your meals provided for you, drinks on demand, maids doing whatever you ask, no cleaning, just spending your days indulging in your favourite pursuits. What would you do with yourself if you could avoid drudgery?
The closest I’ve come to being an aristocrat is going to an all-inclusive holiday resort, like the one I’m in right now.
People are sometimes surprised that someone like me—a middle-class designer type who enjoys foreign films and fermented foods—would go to a place like this, and it’s true that I don’t feel amongst my tribe here. Nonetheless I am fascinated by these weird gated communities and want to explore why.
We, my wife and I, first got the bug for all-inclusive when we were backpacking in Cuba. We had been learning about the revolution, traipsing around cities, exploring life without capitalism, going on 17-hour train journeys, watching baseball in the sun, getting hassled in the streets, and we were utterly spent. We found a state-run travel agent in Trinidad who arranged for us to stay in Varadero for four days for $50 a night, including all food and drink. We had no expectations, but what was not to like. After backpacking, it was like being in heaven: a five-star hotel with white sand beaches and sumptuous buffets.
A few years later, in 2012, we had an urge to visit the pyramids. Egypt had been in the news after the Arab Spring and subsequent military junta, but mainly I wanted to see the Sphinx. We discovered it was a lot cheaper—possibly due to terrorist incidents—to go to Sharm El Sheikh and do day trips than stay in the capital. We did three day trips, seeing Cairo, Jerusalem, and Petra sometimes on absurd 28-hour coach journeys and, frankly, couldn’t have done them without a place to relax afterwards.
With all the covid lockdowns, it has been a tough couple of years and we wanted something to look forward to. In November, during the depths of the Scottish winter, we booked the best value all-inclusive holiday we could find in a place where the temperature was going to be around 25 degrees. You get a beautiful room, access to pools, a beach, unlimited (local) drinks, three meals at huge buffets, and various entertainment and activities. You stay in a self-contained, guarded, gated community. It feels a bit like a sanatorium, a place to recover from two years of Zoom fatigue.
Gated communities are bad because they increase social divisions. They tell people: we are not going to share the public realm with you, we are just going to build higher walls and add more security until you can no longer bother us.
When I posted the video to a group chat a friend said:
Nothing says I'm experiencing a new country like a big "peasants get to fuck fence".
The resorts of Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada were established by the Egyptian government as a way to concentrate tourism in one place. The hotels are part-owned by the state and run by the big travel companies. A similar situation exists in Varadero, where the Cubans allows Westerners to indulge their appetites whilst the people live on rice and beans. Money talks whether you are military dictatorship or a communist dictatorship.
Ironically, the most glorious thing about going all-inclusive is to be able to live without thinking about money. You never have to decide whether something is good value or not, whether you are having a blow-out or being modest. At the beginning of your holiday you get a wristband and with it you are entitled to unlimited drinks and food.
There is some debate over whether all-inclusive holidays represent good value. You pay your money upfront and if you don’t consume then you are losing out. But this doesn’t take into account how much of a hassle money is: checking bills, budgeting, working out tips. A better way to think about it is that this is a chance to experience a life of luxury communism. It helps that the staff are friendly and happy. If they feel like they are being exploited then it doesn’t show. I often wonder how they feel towards these bloated Brits and gourmandising Germans who they slowly poison with alcohol the waiters themselves would never touch. In 50 years time, will we all have a robot butler doing all the work while we indulge our whims? Is this a utopian scenario that we want to help create?
Self-help gurus who are into The Secret say that having an abundant mentality is essential if you want to bring abundance into your life. The opposite, a scarcity mindset, leads people to cling to things bringing suffering. Well, here is an opportunity to test this theory. There’s an amazing sense of abundance when you’re at an all inclusive resort. How do people react when they have it all?
What happens is that you get a lot of obese people who are tanned beyond utility. Wrinkled despite the bulges. The average age is about 60 and there’s a tendency for the guests to be white and working class who found white collar jobs. For most of the people I speak to, all-inclusive is a secular paradise that provides solace after years of work. It’s a place where the hardest question of the day is when do you have your first drink of the day.
It is said that the Buddha’s father was told that his son would either be a great King or a great spiritual leader. To avoid the latter, he kept him in seclusion behind the palace walls wandering well-tended gardens. When he got older he went outside, discovered death and decay, and was so shocked that he decided to leave the palace and become an ascetic. Most people never even get to see the palace gardens, but with the help of all-inclusive luxury you can have a glimpse.
Could you live permanently and in such a escapist fantasy? Would you just get fat or would you become a philosopher?
I am reminded that when Vladimir Nabokov became successful with Lolita, after years of penury and exile, he didn’t buy a house but became a permanent resident in a posh hotel in Switzerland. A hotel with maids, cleaner, cooks, and groundskeepers is a closer, cheaper approximation of the aristocratic life he lost after the Bolshevik revolution than is possible in a democratic age.
I suspect that I would get bored with the artificiality. However, as someone who is curious about the ability of urbanists to construct liveable cities, the all-inclusive resort provides some interesting provocations. For all would-be aristocrats, I recommend it.
Great article! Love the idea of a gated community but needs to have unlimited golf as well!