Animators in Tunisia and tourists. The backside of working as an animator in Tunisia. How to choose a recruitment agency

He undertakes to tell the whole truth about the animators. Who are they - sad clowns or tireless lovers? Why do they need moderate drugs? When do they even sleep? Do they really enjoy dancing the Macarena with you, or do they imagine skinning you alive? Why can they do something that other hotel workers cannot, for example, seduce the mother and daughter of the same family on a bet, and then not get fired from work? Psychologist, artist, best friend and pain in the ass - that's all he is, a great and terrible animator.

As experience shows, almost the most important requests when choosing an ideal hotel for a vacation are the presence or absence of compatriots and animation. Potential vacationers are divided in advance into two camps - lovers and haters - and ask for any hotel, as long as it “is there” or “in no case is it there”, and then they begin to list other selection criteria - pebble or sand beach, the Red Sea or Mediterranean, and so on.

Over the years, the figure of the animator has acquired legends and myths. In the tale of a summer vacation, this is the most famous and multifaceted character: he is the clown of a pea, and the insidious Casanova, and the children’s best friend, and the unrecognized genius, and a pain in the ass who insists on going to play beach volleyball with him or dance a group dance when you want to read a book alone on a sunbed near the sea. Rarely does anyone adhere to neutrality: animators are either very loved or fiercely hated. I belong rather to the second category and as a tourist I have never been to hotels with animation, but as a hotel worker, observing clients from the outside, I begin to think that some people need such a vacation with entertainers, like therapy or even like air.

Animation can be different. In more luxurious hotels, such fun is designed only for children: while parents laze on the beach, the kids build sand castles or draw the sun and a pine tree under the watchful supervision of a couple of nannies, then they have dinner with them, play with them and return them to mom and dad in the evening. Sometimes nannies are hotel workers, then they work with clients of various nationalities, and their task is to entertain children who can be mischievous and capricious in any language unknown to them. Sometimes these are guys hired by a specific tour operator, and then they work only with kids from a certain country. Once I worked side by side with such an animator from a Slovak company. His summer was wonderful - all the tourists came in couples, without children, and he slept all day until lunch, then lay on the beach, drank Sicilian wine in incredible quantities and blessed the magical country of Italy.

In simpler hotels, especially those that are located tens of kilometers from any city and entertainment, there is usually a whole team of animators - for children and adults: babysitters, fitness trainers, dancers, actors, singers, DJ, costume designer and others, on who has enough imagination and improvisation of hotel administrators. In my practice, one such company even had its own magician, who in the evenings showed tourists tricks like “Remember the card! Oh, where did she go? Hurray, the card was found in a German client’s Pina Colada.” True, he did not work for long; very soon he was fired for alcoholism and “sawing” a tourist in the broom closet at the reception desk.

The work of an animator is that from early morning until late evening they have to eat with tourists, swim with them, play ball, organize “fun starts”, dance competitions, joke, flirt, perform plays in the evenings, then dance at a disco , then help the bartenders clean up, and then trudge off to the night rehearsals for tomorrow's performance. And so all summer without days off, sixteen hours a day.

Many animators I know were on moderate drugs, and only a heartless person could condemn them for this.

The task of animators is to become for you what you miss so much in everyday life: a best friend, a nanny for children, a psychologist or a lover. An experienced barker can immediately determine whether you want to dance the “dance of the little ducklings”, or don’t want to, or want to, but don’t remember the movements, or want and remember all the movements, but are waiting to be pulled out by the hand, because you are afraid of looking like an idiot, and it seemed like you had nowhere to go. Many tourists come and immediately declare that they hate these stupid mass entertainments, flatly refuse to participate in them, and generally got here by accident, but then they see that the vast majority are having fun, and no one will judge them if they shout at karaoke “Nose-nose” and play intellectual games like “pop a balloon tied to the bottom of a Norwegian tourist with your body” (yes, this is done not only at Russian weddings) - and relax, only asking not to tag them in photos on social networks.
Most people are actually lonely, and many simply lack a group of friends with whom they could do all sorts of fun nonsense, without being distracted by boring conversations about work, children, an annoying wife and politics. And so that no one in ten years will be able to tell your colleagues or a new girlfriend how you were once dressed drunk in Turkey in a hijab and forced to imitate a belly dance. There is no need to try to find an approach to someone, put up with someone’s difficult character, persuade them to play basketball or worry that your new friend will steal your girl away from you - the animator is always cheerful, easy-going, easy to communicate, and will not joke offensively, and if he retires with the young lady you like, he will try so that neither you nor anyone else in the hotel finds out about it.

The animator’s tasks include respecting your boundaries, being delicate and not pestering you when you don’t want to communicate, and also being ready to listen to you, entertain and console you when, on the contrary, you want to. But these are precisely the qualities that we so lack in any of our neighbors. And very often - precisely in the neighbor with whom we came to the resort, expecting to spend the entire vacation, for example, at the sea, playing beach ball games and dancing in discos, and not at all in front of the TV watching football matches. Or not in front of the pool with a book. One of my acquaintances, a director of horror films, came to the sea with his wife and materials for a new film, and left with a broken heart - during his vacation, his wife realized that she could no longer stand his creative searches and snobbery, she wanted simple human joys and uncomplicated entertainment, and left him for the animator.

Vacation is an excellent opportunity to try on some new social mask and another model of behavior that is scary to try on at home, among old acquaintances and colleagues: a shy young lady can finally pluck up the courage and play at being a lady vamp, a modest young man can try to become a shirt - a guy and the soul of the company. Even if the transformation performance ends unsuccessfully, you will most likely never meet witnesses to your fiasco. This is somewhat similar to a prolonged corporate party, only after a morning hangover you will not discover that you do not remember how you danced the lezginka on the table and then vomited into the restaurant curtain, but your boss remembers it very well.

Vacationers often come to hotels with animation in the masks of haters and pretend that they ended up here by accident, then they find an outlet in the animation and try their best to do during a two-week vacation everything that they do not have time to do in a year at home, without fear of consequences: dance at a disco , get completely drunk, tell a dirty joke into a microphone, or improve your sex life. An animator, by the way, is an ideal candidate for a summer affair: unlike other vacationers, he does not have the stress that has accumulated during the cold office season, he is always cheerful, active and should lift your spirits and give you compliments. Most animators are twenty-year-old students whose health and enthusiasm allow them to work fourteen to sixteen hours a day as entertainers, and then indulge in passionate passion with the next tourist before dawn.

In every hotel there is some young man who came to this job with the specific goal of seducing as many tourists as possible of any nationality, age and physique, and he does not wait for chance, but throws himself into all troubles - to the delight of single ladies. Sometimes it turns into a competition between colleagues or even a bet. One day, two of my colleagues argued that one of them could seduce both mother and daughter in one family. She didn’t hold a candle, but the hero himself swore that he had won. By the way, about romances: I know many love stories between employees that continued after the end of the season, but not a single story about an animator with a client that did not end immediately after the announcement of boarding for the return flight. In some hotels, bosses do not approve of relationships between colleagues and threaten them with dismissals, but mostly they still turn a blind eye to it.

Each animator has approximately several thousand friends on social networks - every week a good half of those leaving home add them as friends, then tag them in a hundred photographs with the caption “The best vacation! We will meet soon, friends! Quite often I see clients who go every summer to the very hotel where a certain animator or a whole team works that year, perceiving them as their party. And for the workers themselves, very often such tourists are the only friends:

There is no sadder sight than an animator with ten years of experience.

Such people usually no longer have friends, a wife, or a home as such. Their main talents are a stock of simple, flat jokes for all occasions, the ability to come up with moves in a minute for a group dance to any new song on the radio and short-term memory to remember the names and preferences of eight hundred tourists, and a week later, after the day of departures and arrivals, to forget them and remember new ones.

In any genre of art, they raise the theme of the deep melancholy of the old clown, which is hidden behind ridiculous makeup, a round red nose and stupid laughter, and in world cinema it is sometimes customary to add an infernal flair, rivers of blood and some exquisite cruelty to this image. As for the animator’s character, he only inspires Facebook statuses, although, if you pay attention, their work is approximately the same. Many guys are young theater artists, musicians or dancers who are unable to earn a decent living in their city, and for the summer they go to work as buffoons in hotels, hoping to find something more decent and more serious in the fall. And, to be honest, you still won’t earn much in such a job - the salaries of workers in this position are indecently low, but they feed them for free and dress them in colorful T-shirts and T-shirts with the hotel logo for free. I know a couple of animators who “made it big” and became stars in the Italian versions of the show “Full House and Company,” but in other cases, people who have worked in such positions for more than a couple of years have an even sadder fate.

But it is very pleasant to be friends and collaborate with such colleagues: if the client is irreconcilably angry or inconsolable, you can always turn to the animator for help. In comparison with him, in the eyes of a tourist, we are soulless office plankton, we cannot afford an extra joke to defuse the situation, and in general, our only task is to “pump money and fool our brother,” and their task, the animators, is to entertain . In general, I love animators. For me, the main disadvantage of working in hotels with animation is the same musical repertoire, selected from the most fashionable hits from the radio, children's songs and other hell, which is on repeat throughout the entire four to five months of work. Every time I hear some “Bailando”, I get a cramp, because for several summer seasons in a row I listened to it fifty times a day and, horror of horrors, I still remember all the movements of the group dance, although I can’t dance it never had to.

As a tourist, I myself have never gone to hotels with animation, and in general, I’m not like that, no, no. Never. Haters gona hate.

On our first trip to Tunisia to work as animators, we had no idea what would await us. The desire for courage, active recreation and language practice was irresistible, so there was no doubt about the correctness of the decision made. My friend Sasha and I flew to the hotel at the very beginning of the season, where endless rehearsals of the show awaited us, of which there were so many that my head, along with my body, ached from how much there was to remember.

Animation Team

Upon arrival at the hotel, we met the future animation team. It consisted of 8 Tunisian guys, including the animation chief and DJ, as well as a local girl.

Basically, everyone is 20-30 years old, cheerful and active people.

During the season, some were fired, some could not stand it and left on their own, others could not establish contact with tourists or simply did not speak foreign languages ​​well enough.

I would like to note that in addition to good physical and dance skills, to work as an animator you must knowledge of at least English, and ideally French, Russian and Arabic. An entertainment worker also must be a good psychologist, since the flow of tourists from different countries is very large and everyone needs to find their own approach.

Schedule

Every day for 6 months, the daily routine was approximately the same, with the exception of weekends. So, the working day schedule:

7:00 - 9:00

Breakfast in the hotel restaurant;

Meeting of the animation team led by the chief, discussing work issues and responsibilities for the coming day;

Beginning of work. Traditionally, the whole team gathers in the area around the pool, greets tourists and arranges morning group dances;

10:00-12:00

Everyone does their own thing: one plays darts with tourists, another plays volleyball on the beach, the rest play various games and establish contact with tourists;

The whole team reconvenes at the pool for an afternoon game and a group dance with the tourists.

12:30-14:30

Lunch and rest time for everyone except the animation team. At this time we discussed the evening show, planned numbers, rehearsed them or prepared a new show.

14:30-17:00

Start of active events: aqua gymnastics, water polo, exercises, communication with tourists, etc.;

17:00-19:00

The free time that we girls spent on showering, makeup and other preparations;

An animation meeting in the main hotel restaurant to greet guests and wish them bon appetit in all languages ​​of the world;

Dinner time for us;

Guests begin to move to the evening animation, our task is to create a friendly atmosphere through communication with tourists;

The animation team hosts a children's disco;

Group dances with all guests;

The beginning of the show is different every day, the program is repeated every two weeks. At the end, the animators invite guests to join in dancing together;

Inviting and accompanying tourists to the disco, which is located inside the hotel, further stay there at will.

Underwater rocks

Let me start with the fact that all the animators, at first glance, are very positive, energetic and active young people. But it is impossible to always be in a good mood, dance endlessly and smile at everyone, while communicating with hundreds of people every day.

Therefore, I want to assure you that basically goodwill is a fake picture, which hides psychological, physical fatigue and chronic lack of sleep.

All hotel employees, including animation, will most likely forget you as soon as the transfer to the airport leaves the hotel porch. In order to avoid confusion, the names of tourists are completely replaced with different nicknames, which are easier to remember.

Thus, for the entire season there can be 100 “crazygirls” and “mothers”, the first being used for young girls, and the second for ladies of Balzac age.

There is another case. There are many exceptions when workers really want to find a wife, preferably from Europe, and move there with her.

If you are an enviable bride, you can be sure that you will remain unforgettable. For some reason, enterprising and cunning young Tunisians believe that Europe is heaven on earth and everything is fine there, life is smooth, and there is a salary that they never dreamed of.

For the sake of their dubious dream, they are ready to please and woo ladies of any age and appearance, sparing no compliments and loud words of love. Women, in turn, under the influence of the sun, music and endless alcohol, are not at all averse to such increased attention. These holiday romances begin suddenly and often end just as quickly. Particularly persistent ladies return to their oriental machos dozens of times, spending the money they earn on tours and gifts for their lover, and also, no matter how regrettable it may be, abandoning their families.

We constantly witnessed how women brought a huge number of gifts to animators, bartenders, waiters, etc., ranging from alcohol and clothes, ending with expensive phones and money to open a business, but everything was for him, his beloved.

In parallel with this, we observed thousands of broken hearts and tears from the girls. Any help or attempt to open their eyes provoked complaints from our colleagues, who actively defended the ignorance of their next passion.

To this day, I am haunted by the question of how these young guys managed to so professionally fool the brains of women of all categories and nationalities.

Apparently, many years of experience in tourism and a great desire for a good life played a role.

The female part of the animation team was also not deprived of attention from the stronger half of humanity. True, this only caused discomfort - I had to fight back, get out of unpleasant situations, and “ignore” hints from administration representatives and chiefs of all hotel structures.

Of course, we are not robots, we got very used to some people, and a circle of “favorites” among tourists was determined. Basically, they were children and those adults who returned to the hotel more than once. They also brought gifts to us, but mainly it was Russian food, which we really missed. After two years, we keep in touch with many, sometimes even meeting in different cities.

During my time working in animation, I gained invaluable experience and excellent practice in foreign languages, improved my physical fitness, and most importantly, began to better understand people.

I would like to advise all future tourists to be more vigilant and not lose their heads, despite the fact that you are on vacation. Under a beautiful wrapper there may be bitter candy, and behind the carefree smile of an entertainment worker there may be hidden not only fatigue, but also selfish calculation.

Throughout the entire tourist season, the Zita Beach Resort 4* hotel was inhabited by four animator guys plus a DJ. True, at the end of my stay in Tunisia, “our DJ” was lured away by another hotel, offering him more interesting conditions. Therefore, the role of DJ had to be taken on by the eldest of the animators with the nickname “Coco”, funny to the Russian ear - a middle-aged boy of 32 years old.

The rest turned out to be youngsters compared to him: the youngest Sky is 18, Shusha is 20, and Aziz, the main choreographer and audience favorite, is 25 years old.

The guys, as they say, are jacks of all trades: during the day they get to know new arrivals, invite people to water gymnastics - aqua-gym, volleyball, tennis or water polo, archery or kayaking, and in the evening they organize karaoke or local amateur concerts.

Almost on the first evening of my stay at the Zita Beach Hotel, I attended karaoke organized by the animators.

The guys turned out to have a very poor repertoire of Russian songs - some hits from Meladze and modern tweeters unknown to pensioners.

For some time I watched with emotion as a local DJ tried to get Russian pensioners to karaoke to the music of the groups “Hands Up” and “Vopli Vidoplyasova”. Then I felt sorry for the poor animators. After all, they are so far from the Russian mentality!

I had to remember that back in 2005 I hosted Russian discos in Paris. Oh, it was a fun time... but that's not what it's about.

It's good to have internet. Having dug around a little in the search engine, I quickly found time-tested hits that will not leave any Russian on vacation indifferent.

And now all those few people who deigned to leave their cozy bungalows in the evening, hugging each other, shouting at the top of their lungs, “Apples in the snow,” “White roses” and “Blood type on your sleeve.” I had an idea to play the anthem of the Soviet Union, but I decided to leave this feature for next time.

It is worth noting that the evening entertainment program changes every day, and to see the same performance twice, you need to stay at the hotel for at least two weeks.

Well, during stage productions (as is often customary in the East), female roles are performed by animators dressed in women's costumes, or by vacationers from the hotel invited to participate in the performance.

At one of these shows, Coco showed himself to be a real fakir, surprising the audience by lying down on broken glass and spewing fire.

One day I attended a sketch evening. In French, English and funny Russian, the Tunisian guys tried to stir up the audience.
But the best thing the local amateur performances produced were quite funny pantomimes.

And after midnight, for those who were still standing, they organize a disco.
It must be admitted that despite all the efforts of the animators, due to the fact that the hotel was practically empty, only a couple of dozen vacationers showed up for the concerts, and only a few, either the toughest or the most tireless, remained at the disco.

Only after the last clients have left do the guys know the right to go to bed. They live right there on the hotel grounds and eat with everyone else in the dining room. And they live like this for six months a year, from the beginning to the end of the tourist season, from April to the end of October.

And after October that’s it, there’s no work. The guys are heading home until next season. During this forced downtime, they go fishing, help DJs organize rare city events, and earn extra money at private parties and discos. The youngest, Sky, becomes a pizza delivery boy.

And it’s not a fact that next year they will be called back as animators at the hotel. Tunisia is currently going through difficult times; tourism is in decline due to the Arab Spring revolution and the Libyan civil war after French bombing and the overthrow of Gadafi.
But let's not talk about sad things. Next time I'll talk about my trip with the pirates...

Should you trust an animator from Tunisia and is it possible to build a serious relationship with him? Hello! I returned from Tunisia a week ago. At the hotel we started communicating with the animator. A week later they kissed. Then we spent the night with him. and then spent the night in his room. He began to forbid me to go play volleyball at a nearby hotel (the level of volleyball there was higher). He forbade talking and taking pictures with other men. To be honest, it was nice when he was so jealous. It's fun and easy to be with him. I was happy. He very actively said that he loved me, wanted children, that he wanted to marry me. We will live in Russia for half a year, and in Tunisia for half a year. That I must promise that I will not forget him and will definitely come to his house. For two weeks. Then he will come to me, and then we will get married. I told him that there was no need for words and smiled. He was very angry and shouted that I should believe him. I treated it like a holiday romance. We exchanged phone numbers. I thought it would all end there. he called immediately when I arrived. and now he calls or writes every day. I don't understand why he needs this. and of course, from such attention, from the desire to believe, I suffer. I can’t understand, I don’t believe him (although I really want to). I think girls always come to the animators for the second time. Maybe this is some kind of excitement so that they will come back to you? or just the opportunity for free sex? and all the words, just not to use it once, but so that they will come to you again? or is everything serious and worth believing))?

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Comments

Ekaterina 05/29/2013 03:05

Don't waste your time!! Just read your story again!! And remember it as a passing hobby!!

Telling fairy tales about children, weddings and fairy-tale life is deception in 97% of cases!! Because Most of the guys there are from poor families, they have a great desire to leave, no matter where!! In a month he will start asking you for gifts and money, mom will get sick or something else)) All this “noodles on the ears” has not changed for 20 years at the resorts!!!

Nura 05/31/2013 02:05

Let’s say you can trust him, but the average salary of an animator is 400 dinars, and it will be very difficult to build a family life with this money without investments on your part. So think about whether you need this...

Elena 06/08/2013 11:06

Can you write the name of the animator? Because last month I had the same thing))) Or the name of the hotel.

Yulia 06/10/2013 07:06

Girls, write in which hotels these animators work. Or maybe it's one and the same. I was at Tergi Club, his name was Dia or Dido, 23 years old, cute with piercings.

Vanessa 10/15/2013 12:10

It's their business to scam girls, women and even pensioners. Everyone tells the same fairy tales about love, weddings and all that. He has 3 goals: to scam you for a visa, for money or for sex. If you are interested, read it on the Internet, there is a lot of information! There are particularly sophisticated scammers, and there are simpler ones.

I won't go into details. But I can name the last names of such animators from hotels: Minhotel and Alkantara: Tito - cheats for sex, if possible for money (small expenses). Has a wife from France. Momo (real name: Mouheb Gabous) - scams for sex, if possible for money (small expenses), possibly for a visa. Sam/Samuel (fakir of the show, real name Salim Bou Absa), is a tough scam for money, sometimes for sex, followed by a scam for money and a visa.

He is married to an Englishwoman, has several permanent foreign women, with whom he maintains long-term relationships in order to pump money out of them. Sam (works in a miniclub with children, real name: Issam Badr) - scams for money and sex Raf (break dancer, real name Mokni Thafer) - scams for money, sex and visa. Dj Fa (DJ) - sex, money These are really proven options by girls from different races, as well as correspondence with other foreigners who had contact with them.

We are ready to meet with anyone who makes contact, it doesn’t matter fat, very fat, old, very old, with children, with a husband, it doesn’t matter. Especially the fakir and the DJ do not disdain any kind of relationship, because... the main goal is money. The songs are beautiful, the explanations and arguments are very convincing. The main thing is not to give or send them money under any circumstances. This is business for them! Don't forget about it! And you will be loved there just like all the other tourists who want to believe it.

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