When should you celebrate Valentine's Day at your club?

In this post, we’ll be discussing Valentine’s Day and gentlemen’s clubs. Because of the unique dynamics of the holiday and the highly niche focus of the sex industry, Valentine’s Day represents something of a conflict of interest for most gentlemen’s clubs patrons, and is often a tough sell for the clubs themselves.

Valentine’s Day is a rather interesting holiday in financial terms, as it has traditionally been the subject of large amounts of discretionary spending. According to the National Retail Federation, total Valentine’s Day spending is expected to be roughly $17.3 billion in 2014, slightly down from the $18 billion spent in 2013. So, Valentine’s Day can be quite a lucrative holiday for certain industries.

The problem, though, is that February 14 typically runs a little bit thinner than nearly any other day of the year. Many of your key dancers will be out enjoying the evening with their partners and/or spouses, and ditto for several of your staff members. Additionally, some of your regular customers will be absent for the same reason. Complicating things is the fact that this year, Valentine’s Day falls on what is usually the second busiest night of the week.

So, the question naturally becomes “what should we do for Valentine’s Day?” The go-to answer would be to run some kind of promotion or party as with any other holiday or special event, of course—but is it really effective? After all, many of your married customers are going to be home with their wives, and some of your single customers will specifically avoid clubbing on Valentine’s Day because they feel stigmatized about not having anyone to celebrate with, whether it’s justified or not.

Our advice regarding Valentine’s Day is going to be somewhat short and sweet (no pun intended). In the best interests of profitability, having a dedicated promotion on Valentine’s Day itself is effectively useless. It seems logical to run some kind of event or party on February 14, but it is actually counter-intuitive. This is because Valentine’s Day is one of the hardest holidays to convert in terms of consumer behavior and their spending habits. An analogous comparison would be like running a party directly on Christmas Day, or New Year’s.

However, for businesses in the service industry—specifically nightlife establishments such as strip clubs—much of our business is seasonal and/or event based, and a large part of your success is simply knowing which events to promote and when to promote them. In other words, if you want to promote Valentine’s Day, simply hold your party on the weekend immediately before the 14th. Do NOT run your promotion on Valentine’s Day directly!

It’s a win-win situation! Having your Valentine’s party the weekend before allows your talent, staff, and guests to spend the 14th with their loved ones without feeling guilty, and it even gives your guests more time to get the stripper smell off of them before hitting P.F. Chang’s with the wife (just kidding…sort of). 

And remember, you’ll still be open on Valentine’s Day itself, as there will be people who’d rather be there on the 14th for a variety of reasons.

For our next post, we’ll be covering the effects of weather on club traffic and how to adjust accordingly. In the meantime, we’re out of chocolate Kisses—off to the grocery store for more!