The year is 1974. Abba has just won Eurovision with Waterloo and McDonald’s is about to open its first restaurant in the UK. And although it won’t have the same meteoric impact on our cultural life as those two, friends Mark Chitty and Andy Searle are driving a mini-revolution in international travel: the launch of Mark Warner.
The tour operator initially catered for ski holidays for singles and couples, advertised in the classified pages of newspapers, which were personally looked after by Mark and Andy, both in their early twenties.
Over the following decades, the business grew and now, in its 50th year, operates in six locations: five summer resorts in Greece and Turkey and an Alpine chalet in France.
The couple’s masterstroke came in the 1980s when, with young families of their own, they were one of the first companies to add child care to vacation packages.
And in 1996 they settled on the current format: prime location, beachfront, pool, locally sourced food, childcare from morning to night, and as many activities as a family could reasonably fit into a day.
Free time: Dan Hyde checks into Mark Warner’s Paleros resort in Greece, pictured. He notes that with so many activities going on, there are always free sun loungers around the pool.
Mark Warner has five summer resorts in Greece and Turkey and an Alpine chalet in France. Above: the port of the town of Paleros
From sailing to tennis, mountain biking to fitness classes, diving to wakeboarding and single-oar paddle boarding, you can dip in and out whenever you like. And it’s all included in the main price, along with flights, transfers, accommodation and half-board.
In my opinion (and no one expects these holidays to be cheap), Mark Warner has perfected his art at his Paleros resort, in a bay three hours north of Athens and just a 30-minute transfer from Preveza airport.
Our visit had a simple goal: to let mom and dad relax as much as possible while our little boy Freddy did the opposite. With a bit of luck, I could also improve my clumsy tennis forehand.
The main challenge we had was how to keep our restless three-year-old entertained long after bedtime while we ate dinner. We had a bunch of moving baby strollers in front of us.
Gear shift: Paleros is just across the Ionian Sea from the island of Lefkada, which appears in the photo.
The resort organises excursions to Lefkada’s white beaches, Dan reveals, such as Port Katsiki, seen above.
Mark Warner not only thought about how to solve this problem, but went further.
Every evening at 7.30pm we would drop Freddy off at the “sleep club”. You walk into one of the nursery rooms and it looks like a mini-cinema: dim lighting, air conditioning, a projector projecting the image onto the wall – although the children are huddled in their pyjamas on camping mats. On the screen a short film (like The Snail and the Whale) is played followed by a longer classic like Beauty and the Beast. One by one, the children fall asleep.
Dinner at Paleros, like breakfast, is a buffet. The fish is fresh, the souvlaki is superb and the Greek fritters are delicious. If you fancy, you can round off the evening with a game of pub quiz or musical bingo (a musical quiz with a bingo ending) at the beach bar.
Paleros offers plenty of activities, from windsurfing to tennis, mountain biking to fitness classes, diving, wakeboarding and single-paddle paddle boarding.
At 10:30 pm we picked up Freddy, who fell asleep like a log.
Paleros is located across the Ionian Sea from the white beaches of Lefkada, a popular island to which Mark Warner offers excursions. Located across the road from Potamaki Beach, the resort is a combination of 130 villas and rooms surrounded by flowers, lush greenery and views of olive-covered mountains. Breakfast and dinner are served in the main restaurant (lunch is served in the seaside taverna), but most guests sit at the outdoor tables by the pool bar.
The beauty of a holiday at Mark Warner is that guests are spread out all over the resort – in the waves, on bikes, on tennis courts or in the nursery – so there are always free sun loungers around the three pools.
Olly, the resort’s young tennis pro, managed to rescue my forehand, just in time for Friday’s tournament.
As for childcare, you can book three hours each day, either in the morning or afternoon, and we were very impressed with the service.
There are things you can take for granted on this type of vacation: a wide variety of activities, evening entertainment, social interaction… and others you can’t: the quality of the food, the temperature of the sea, the helpfulness of the staff and the reliability of the childcare service. In all the vital imponderables, Mark Warner’s Paleros turned out to be a triumph.
