A snobs' guide to holidaying with class

Want to avoid the plebs? Jeremy Atiyah knows all the right spots, like Knokke-Heist. Never heard of it? Exactly.

Published: 04 June 2000

Would you pay a premium to stay in a resort that John Travolta once stayed in? Would you pay a bigger premium to stay in the same resort where the King of Spain is staying at the moment? If so, the holiday season must be a worrying time for you. Because your choice of destination is going to reveal the truth - about you, your finances, and your social profile (or lack of it).

As always, the Mediterranean looks risky this year. Booking into an "exclusive" resort such as Marbella, Monte Carlo, Cannes or Capri may enable you to catch a glimpse of some minor Grimaldi but will also compel you to mingle with the nouveaux riches - millions of them.

You might insist on Antibes or Portofino on the grounds of extreme expense if nothing else (try buying a holiday home in one of them), but beaches with a guarantee of absolutely no plebs at all, ever? Very hard to find. Punta Ala on the Tuscan coast, which contains a beach strip you cannot access unless you are staying in one of the resort's five-star hotels - and where all the sun-loungers are pre-assigned - is a possibility, as is Cap Ferat on the Cote d'Azur.

For a safer bet, but still in the Med, this year I am advising people to book something grand in a place nobody else has heard of. Your friends cannot be certain that these areas contain no Porsches. Spain? Find a parador in the Jaen region, with its olive-clad rolling hills and rambling farmsteads. Italy? A palazzo in the Salentine Peninsula with its cliffs and rugged coves. Just don't give the game away by talking about the "new Tuscany" (implying that you would be in Tuscany if only you could afford it).

A slight variant on the above is to follow a new fashion emerging this year, namely to participate in very expensive touristic activities while dressed as scruffy American college kids. Flying to expensive places on cut-price airlines is extremely trendy for this reason, and taking Ryanair to Brescia in order to attend the Verona opera festival is a perfect example. "We find that lots of young people are saving money on the air fare in order to spend it at the opera," Ethel Power, the head of communications for Ryanair, tells me.

Similar examples include flying another Ryanair route to Alghero in Sardinia, to reach the Aga Khan's Costa Smeralda resort, or using Go's route to Naples as a means of reaching Positano.

Another gambit I recommend for this summer is to seek out the resorts known to be exclusive and glamorous by the locals, but not generally popular outside their native areas. Examples of this include a small, windy town on the Belgian North Sea coast, which serves as a resort for the ultra-rich of the Benelux and Ruhr valley regions. Never before heard of Knokke-Heist? You have now. Follow signs to Le Zoute, an area of town which "makes Monte Carlo look like Bognor" (according to the afficionado I spoke to). The Dutch, Germans and Belgians who run European industry drive their Ferraris and Lambourginis to eat in three-rosette Michelin restaurants here. Why not join them this summer.

Failing all this you will have to look outside Europe and, in fact, a City banker has suggested to me one powerful reason for doing so this summer: "People who count their money will all be taking their holiday in Euroland this year because it is so cheap," he says. "Which makes this the perfect time to rent a house in New England rather than in Tuscany." Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, as ever, will be the places to take your family holiday if you want to rub shoulders with Spike Lee and the Clintons.

But as a select group of British class snobs are already aware, Latin America - with its excellent traditions of wealth-inequality- can offer even better opportunities than the USA. Try an estancia near Buenos Aires in Argentina, for example, or even better, in neighbouring Uruguay (which retains a pleasing exclusivity). The brochure from Journey Latin America describes the estancia accommodation thus: "An elegant country mansion shaded by whispering colonnades of poplars; landscape gardens viewed from oak-panelled drawing rooms..." Tennis, croquet and polo are among the available jollities.

But if you are not tempted by the thought of scones in La Pampa, you obviously need to get down to Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of the Baha peninsula in Mexico instead. This is where deep-sea fishing and an end-of-world feeling have tempted both Madonna and Sylvester Stallone to build their holiday houses into the cliff-face behind the fishing village.

Looking ahead to next winter, the options for serious wealth snobs remain the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. In the Caribbean, the Turks and Caicos Islands look to be a particularly good bet: recent or forthcoming visitors, I am assured, include Prince Andrew and Nigel Mansell. Just make sure you don't get fobbed off with some second-class island (Providenciales or Parrot Cay should be okay).

Down in the Indian Ocean, meanwhile, Fregate Island on the Seychelles is not to be snorted at. The entire island, reachable by private charter plane, contains only 16 private villas, each of which have their own bit of coast and beach, though the risk is that you would not see Nigel Mansell even if he was staying in the next villa. And think about choosing Mauritius instead if you want any chance of being served with a half-decent bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape before dinner.


Australasia might not sound like promising territory for any kind of snob I can think of, though Queensland's Hayman Island is the name to drop if you want to see an Aussie turn deferential (they can't help it). For similar reasons, if you are planning to be in Sydney for the Olympics, the only civilised place to stay will be the Lilianfels Country House Hotel, very British, and 90 minutes out of the city in the Blue Mountains.

Finally, I am told that over in New Zealand Lenny Henry and Dawn French have bought a house on Waiheki island, just outside Auckland, the new "Stockholm of the south". If that isn't a reason to get down there as fast as possible, you are obviously reading the wrong story.