Not too long ago, Club 28 which was located at Felberstraße 78 has closed down shop. This is just one of the many bars and nightclubs that have closed over the last year in Vienna. We’ve previously reported about Okaybar and Termingirls (click on the links to learn more), but Club Café, Evebar and numerous other small establishments have gone bankrupt in the last year too.

Why did Club 28 close?

Club 28 was a bar that was profiting in its “prime years” from the street prostitution which was strong on Felberstraße. Prostitutes were allowed to stand in front of the door and invite clients in – a method that is now prohibited. The bar offered cheap drinks and very cheap rooms where the streetworkers could have sex with their clients. Club 28 was located near the Gürtel, so it was as close to a red-light district as it gets.

The bar itself was never that great, but it had its place in the scene until the law that pushed street prostitution out of the city was introduced. Apparently, Club 28’s clientele has dropped by a large margin when the new street prostitution laws took effect. The business failed to adapt to the circumstances and they had to close down shop because of this.

Reasons why nightclubs are closing

Here are the main reasons why so many nightclubs and other establishments are getting closed recently:

Nightclub system is evolving or disappearing: the nightclub scene in Vienna is getting thinner and thinner. The default brothel system that was once in Austria has been replaced by studios, Laufhauses and FKK clubs. As it seems, only the good nightclubs that are able to adapt and improve are surviving. There are clubs that in addition to evolving also survive because of the strong heritage that they hold, such as Maxim for example.

Clubs that do not go with the time, have no online strategy, don’t do any research or recruiting are inevitably doomed to fail. Even though Club 28 had somewhat of an online presence with a respectably designed website and an Instagram profile, they were not able to attract enough clients with their business model.

Prices in Vienna are going down: due to prices going down, most clubs never find the right price scheme that works for them. Lowering the prices to make up for the lack of quality never works. We’ve seen multiple businesses that tried lowering their prices (Funpalast), but their success is temporary most of the time. Clubs that follow the price drop may just as well close shop.

Clubs need proper management: in order to run a club, you got to be a manager or an entrepreneur and not a pimp type of person anymore. Just like any other business, this one also needs proper advertisement, a strategy plan and a unique business model that attracts attention. The times when pimps ran the best brothels are far behind us, as the paysex scene in Vienna has evolved a lot over the last couple of decades.

With so many nightclubs closing and opening with new owners, the ones that are still operational need to adapt to the circumstance and evolve into something better. Nightclubs and bars that fail to do this will most likely have to close shop in the nearby future.

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