Learn how to swim like a mermaid

Swim, play and pose like a mermaid in select hotels in Spain, Mexico and Japan

Why use the empty hotel gym when you could be in the pool learning how to be a mermaid instead?

That’s the idea behind the mermaid workout, launching next month at select hotels in Spain, Japan and Mexico available on Hotels.com.

Guests don a shiny mermaid tail for the free 45-minute aqua workouts, which blend yoga, Pilates and barre exercises – alongside plenty of posing, naturally.

The workouts will be led by a professional merman called Chris, whose Instagram is full of him swishing around underwater with a gold tail. “We need to keep our bodies in tip-top shape to be able to power through the water, dive into the depths of the fathoms below and look glamorous on a rock at any given time – my fins gets a proper workout,” he says.

According to the hotel booking platform, 46 per cent of holiday-goers would book a holiday just to take part in a mermaid fitness class, while 37 per cent believe that mermaids actually exist.

The mermaid workouts will be available at the Zafiro Palace Palmanova hotel in Mallorca from 20-22 September; at the Kanucha Bay Hotel & Villas in Okinawa, Japan from 17-21 September; and at Camino Real Polanco Mexico in Mexico City on 1, 8, 15, 22 September.

I did a mermaid workout in Boracay​

Cathy Adams learning how to be a mermaid in Boracay

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Boracay, the now-shuttered holiday island in the Philippines, was to learn how to be a mermaid.

I booked a place at the very seriously named Philippine Mermaid Swimming Academy, whose classes took place on Boracay’s White Beach. I assumed it would be all posing for Instagram on the sand; it turned out to be a fun and energetic workout.

The mermaids and mermen in my group (including my very reluctant husband, who immediately deleted all photos of himself) chose a fishtail and wedged our sandy bodies into them – an inelegant process that the gorgeous pictures on the website oddly made no reference to.

Then it was 20 minutes of Instagram posing on the beach, rolling about in holiday-goers’ snaps, before shuffling towards the sea to learn how to swim with a giant glittery tail.

What felt uncomfortably tight and cumbersome on land suddenly felt very freeing underwater. Armed with snorkels, my group of mermaids and mermen kicked lightly through the Philippine Sea, moving gently, elegantly and quickly. All thanks to a too-tight, shimmering green-red fishtail.

Not that I’m one to brag in the national press, but: my teacher said I had natural ability and asked if I wanted to “take things further” – aka a proper course with certification. The furthest that career path went was a braggy photo on Facebook.