This is the holiday all middle-class parents want (but it costs £10k a week)

Telegraph

25-03-2025

Katie Morley is the Consumer Champion at The Telegraph. She has won back more than £10m for readers through her Katie Morley Investigates column.
It is usually around this time of year that the topic of conversation on local mums' WhatsApp groups turns to holidays, and the chats in my middle-class area of London are no exception.
Predictably, someone chirps up, 'Looking to book a summer holiday, must be child friendly, any recommendations?'
A flurry of messages will then follow with resort suggestions, mainly across Europe, with a scattering in Dubai and the Maldives.
Having been a lurker on these WhatsApp groups for several years now, I've noticed there are two hotel brands that seem to crop up every time there's a mention of holidays: Ikos and Sani.
So what is it about these resort chains, both owned by the Sani/Ikos Group, that makes them so adored by affluent Londoners?
Well, for starters they have tapped into a group of holidaymakers who were previously underserved – the high-earning but permanently knackered parents who will pay any amount of money for a 'luxury break' with the children in tow.
These are the parents who, pre-children, were used to living the high-life holidaying at stylish resorts around the world, frequenting chic cocktail bars and dining in fabulous Michelin star restaurants.
Now searching for destinations to take the kiddies, they wince at the thought of frequenting one of the hundreds of bog-standard all inclusive 'family resorts' found on booking websites.
To be clear, I'm talking about the type of resort where you'll tuck into basic beige buffets three times a day, sleep in wearily decorated rooms, and lie on white plastic loungers surrounding loud pools adorned with multiple snaking primary-coloured flumes.
This is the type of resort where you'll be greeted by cheery but incessantly annoying travel reps, forced to join in with patronising quizzes, offered ghastly pre-mixed cocktails, and where you'll shut your eyes at night trying to block out someone's shouty Chesney Hawkes impression echoing from the nightly karaoke.
Although probably their kids' idea of heaven, this type of place is unlikely to meet that type of parents' 'vibe check' and, far from a holiday, it may well be their idea of hell.
Enter Ikos and Sani where you won't find a hint of such ickiness. The group's 12 resorts are situated in idyllic beach locations in Greece and Spain, and are fully geared up for families with children. All the usual pools, playgrounds, daycare and entertainment can be found there.
Yet crucially, Ikos and Sani also boast the upmarket look and feel of a five-star hotel that even the more refined, typically middle-class resorts like Club Med and Mark Warner do not quite live up to. The all inclusive Ikos resorts boast a la carte menus designed by Michelin-starred chefs, tastefully designed rooms and public areas, tranquil spas and premium wine lists.
All this sounds too good to be true, and I'm sorry to say that for most high-earning parents who are mortgaged up to their eyeballs and drowning in nursery bills or school fees, it may well be. Because for the many little luxuries that Ikos or Sani offer, the price tag is breathtakingly high.
For a family of four to stay in a one-bedroom bungalow with a garden view at the Ikos Olivia in Halkidiki for the first week of August, it costs £9,878 including flights, according to BritishAirways.com. For a sea view, it's an extra £1,045 and for the luxury of a two-bedroom bungalow, you can add another £7,042 to the already eye-watering price.
Sani Club in Halkidiki comes in slightly more reasonably at £7,231 for a similar room during the same week, assuming both children are under 12. However it's half board, meaning you'll have to pay for food and drinks on top.
Of course, early-bird discounts are available for the super organised and prices are significantly lower during school term-time for anyone with preschoolers or those comfortable with truancy.
Even with the discounts, the prices are so high that it's difficult to understand how the likes of Ikos and Sani manage to fill their ever-expanding number of available hotel rooms. Yet they are growing in popularity.
It makes me think that my colleague who argued earlier this month that we live in a consumerist society where keeping up with the Joneses is not an aspiration, but an entitlement, may well have been bang on the money.
Even for someone earning £200,000 a year, spending £10k on a holiday represents a month of their take-home pay, which is the upper limit of what most financial advisers would recommend spending on holidays annually.
The cynic in me wonders if the obscene price tag might also have something to do with some people's keenness to pipe up publicly about the fact that they've been to a Sani or Ikos resort.
Granted, their Tripadvisor reviews are overwhelmingly 'excellent', but one wonders whether they've become another status symbol that people love to broadcast about in order to portray an image of wealth.
I'm not the only one who's noticed the chatter about these hotels on public forums and then been horrified by the prices. Posh holidays have become a topic of conversation in the playground, too.
Some parents I speak to say they could just about afford a Sani or Ikos holiday during term-time, but most are refraining from booking in case they become acclimatised to the higher level of luxury.
No one wants their subsequent trips to mid-range resorts to feel sad and drab by comparison.
By anyone's standards, £10k is a huge amount to spend on a week's holiday with children who, frankly, would be happy anywhere as long as they've got a pool to splash around in and an ice cream in their hand. But those who can truly afford it should fill their boots and enjoy all that these resorts have to offer.
For everyone else, a family camping trip to France followed by a couple of adult-only weekends away to nice hotels might just quench their thirst for luxury, for a lot less money. The only problem might be finding someone to dump the kids with first.