YOU SPOTTED them at the airport first. Anyone going on an el cheapo 18-30 holiday back in the 80s and 90s started their trip at the bar.
By the time they were on the early hours flight, at least one would have puked and someone else snuck off with one of the air hostesses.
GettyClub 18-30 holidays were once a rite of passage for young Brits, like these pictured partying in Ibiza in 2001[/caption]
The wild holidays were notorious for boozy, raunchy gamesRex Features
Alex SegreHooking up on holiday was practically part of the package deal[/caption]
AlamySex party games were a common feature of the holidays across Europe[/caption]
A young Sam Brick during her time filming documentaries about notorious party hotspots
A Club 18-30 was a rite of passage in the 80s and 90s. As soon as the plane landed the holiday reps – who gave an X-rated meaning to customer satisfaction – commandeered their holidaymakers marching them straight onto the shuttle coaches.
No matter what time of day or night it was, boozy shots were handed out.
Coaches packed with young adults – just about old enough to vote – would be whizzed off to the dingiest of hotels for a week of sun(burn), sand, sea and lots of shagging.
Throughout my 20s I worked as a TV executive, overseeing shows in Mallorca’s Magaluf, Greece’s Malia and the worst of the lot, Ibiza’s San Antonio, which should have been renamed Orgy-on-Sea.
All were 18-30 hotspots and make no mistake, Brits took over any resort they landed in.
To be a holiday rep you need the drinking stamina of an elephant and the energy of the Duracell bunny
Samantha Brick
Now, almost a decade after Malia outlawed these boisterous holidays, The Sun revealed how tourism bosses are desperate to get us back.
Known as ‘t*ts & tequila’ tourism, 18-30 holidays were a cheap and cheerful way for skint youngsters to travel abroad and have some good old fashioned fun.
It cost peanuts to get sozzled on San Miguel or Sangria. The beaches were always full.
Young Brits would use the sunbeds for tanning by day and have sex by night.
The locals might have moaned about cleaning up afterwards – but back then the mantra of the era was “we’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time.”
The kind of behaviour my generation indulged in would send most of the snowflake generation into fits.
These were never holidays for the ‘gram. No one was posting thirst shots or TikToks – instead they were hellbent on having a good time.
For us Gen Xers, a holiday on the Med was the peak of the year. Nothing, NOTHING could spoil it for us.
Suitcase lost? Oh well, we’ll just wash our knickers on repeat. Flight delayed? More drinking time at the airport! We didn’t do a Gen Z and complain on Twitter/X about every unanticipated spit and cough.
And we definitely didn’t threaten to leave bad social media reviews if there wasn’t any fresh mint for our (paid for by our parents) Mojitos.
As for a spreadsheet or – even worse – an app to work out who owed what at the end of the hols? Who wants to party in the sun with the Grinch?
An 18-30 holiday transformed the virgin geek into a sex god. Turned the chubby bestie who no one would look at twice back home into a come-hither sex goddess.
And a banana boat inflatable zipping along the Med’s waters sorted out the wimps from party animals.
The 18-30 ethos was pretty much that everyone was there for cheap alcohol, sex and maybe a tan. It was Butlins spliced with booze and sex.
The hotels were at best described as basic. I saw cockroaches. Dorm beds that had stains in them. Unsafe balconies that give modern day health and safety reps the willies. The pools were about as clean as a jacuzzi after a rugby team had celebrated in it.
But no one cared. No one was ever up for brekkie so who knows what was on offer. Menus were pictures of fast food and everything came with chips.
The majority of teens on the holiday were usually on their first fortnight away from home.
At the start of any 18-30 holiday the reps gather holidaymakers to sign up for everything from booze cruises, bar crawls, toga nights, foam parties and outings to a water park.
This was how the reps made their dosh. When you’re on an 18-30 holiday, signing your daily responsibilities away to someone not much older than you is obligatory.
Randy contests
AlamyGirls were not shy of flashing in public, says Sam[/caption]
AlamyRacy games were organised by the holiday reps themselves[/caption]
Club 18-30Daytime was for sunbathing and trying to sleep off hangovers[/caption]
Take the first night excursion I filmed. It was a hot July night in the late Nineties. Two hundred holidaymakers poured off four coaches at an open-air nightclub in the middle of the countryside in Ibiza.
While everyone is being counted off their bus, a hedgerow nearby rocks violently back and forth. Two minutes later, a flustered couple steps out. He does a fist pump to his mates and she pulls down her boob tube, flashing her breasts at her girlfriends.
The same guy went on to have sex with five other women that evening.
Everything you’ve ever heard about the reps is … true. Yes, they did keep a running score about who shagged the most women over the season.
In every resort I have filmed at, the reps have kept score of the number of women they had sex with. Did the girls know this? Absolutely. Did they care? No.
The party games were notorious. Sex underpins the 18-30 experience and the games designed by the reps encourage it
Samantha Brick
It is primal. Sex on holiday isn’t about love and happy ever after. More than once I heard it described as an itch that needed to be scratched.
They also scored extra points for a woman with the biggest boobs or ‘minger’. Gen Z-ers – I know! This was not the era of wokeness.
To be a holiday rep you need the drinking stamina of an elephant and the energy of the Duracell bunny. Many burnt out or got kicked out and sent back to the UK.
But they earned every penny. If they weren’t at the police station sweet-talking the release of someone from jail, they were at the local hospital getting someone else stitched up.
‘Era of the wet T-shirt’
Image Courtesy of The Advertising ArchivesEven the adverts played on the risque nature of the holidays to attract clients[/caption]
Times Newspapers LtdIt’s no surprise many parents were reluctant to let their kids go on the trips[/caption]
The party games were notorious. Sex underpins the 18-30 experience and the games designed by the reps encourage it. Whether it is passing a water-filled condom down a line using only your thighs, or timing who can put the condom on an oiled courgette the quickest.
Forfeits included wearing a condom on your head or getting a jug of sangria poured over your boobs. This was the era of the wet T-shirt competition.
My theory is the more that a girl says “no way”, the more likely you are to see her on stage, arms in the air, egging the crowd on with her soaked top clinging to her braless boobs.
Foam party nights were an excuse for exhibitionist sex. Cleaners would moan about the amount of mislaid pairs of knickers they’d clean up afterwards.
My life as a Club 18-30 rep
By Thea Jacobs
WHEN Jane Barrett turned 18, her parents refused to let her head out on a notorious Club 18-30 holiday – so a year later she got a job working for the package holiday brand in Mallorca.
Her time in the party destination was certainly eye-opening and a reason Jane, from Yorkshire, believes she did well in life.
Now a CEO, she did two years for Club 18-30 in 1987 and 1988 and here recalls her wildest moments from the summers of mayhem.
jane tells The Sun: “It was the worst job in the world but also the best job in the world. The way female reps were treated was appalling. We were bullied and subjected to misogynistic behaviour all the time.
“I had groups of lads shouting at me ‘get your t*ts out’ and blowing up condoms with their nose. I’m sure they all thought it was very inventive, but I saw it all the time.
“And the male reps were just like dogs on heat, but what bloke wasn’t at that age?
“You worked 10am until 2am seven days a week. It’s the only job I’ve had where people would sneak off to the nightclub loos to get a five-minute nap in a stall. We were exhausted.
“But most of my job was making sure people had a really fun time and being there if anything happened like flights being cancelled or needing to go to the bank.
“In my first year in 1987, I was asked by a hotel member of staff to go and check how many people were in a room, as they thought there were too many.
“I knocked on the door, and it opened, inside were five guys and three girls all completely naked. I was naive back then, so I was really shocked.
“I just turned to the hotel worker and said I thought there were too many people in the room but didn’t know what else to do.
“When taking people to events on a bus, I’d have them climbing over seats to be on the correct side as we went up a hill. We did bar crawls wearing clothes inside out.
“We did the classic fizz buzz drinking game to get people wasted and the sexual innuendo games. It was all in good fun.
“The hotels tended to be absolute dumps, but people would get drunk and smash them up so I understand why they didn’t want to put the groups in nice places.
“One room I was given had no windows and was in a basement, it was gross.
“I became really close with the other reps, and we had this tradition of going to a Wimpy Burger at the end of the night.
“People just had a wild time and it was all good fun. I think kids these days are missing out. People could be free because there were no smartphones.
“It was just bonkers, and no one got seriously hurt on my watch.”
It was routine to see kids drinking until they vomited … and then they’d start drinking again. I lost count of the number of kids I filmed with who ended up phoning their parents for a cash transfer.
And if you weren’t at a bodega downing shots in the day time, then at night you’d be on a bar crawl.
Shot girls would sell all sorts of disgusting alcohol heavy-drinks. There was none of this mocktail this or a matcha tea that. Even on a girl’s night out it was all goldfish cocktails and vino collapso.
Admittedly, by the end of each bar crawl it wasn’t unusual to see couples attempting to have sex against the bar, someone crashed out on the pavement in his urine-stained jeans or a girl face down in a goldfish-sized cocktail bowl of her own vomit.
It was rare to find 18-30 holidaymakers sunbathing by the pool before noon or on the beach at all. Most were usually sleeping off hangovers.
That’s why at departures you always knew when someone had been on an 18-30 holiday. They’d return home either without a tan, sunburnt or with their eyebrows missing because they’d forfeited them in a drinking game.
Yeah, they’d circled the drain of shame after consuming way too much sangria and other psychedelic-coloured cocktails, but they had the best of memories.
There was no adulting, life-ing or social media involved. And what teenager can truly say that nowadays about their favourite holiday?
Holidaymakers felt safe to be silly as there was no social media at the timeRex Features
GettyThe holidays attracted a huge crowd from across the UK[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
