Polish nightlife awakening can’t come soon enough!

While most of the bars and clubs in Warsaw and their nightlife business owners should be getting ready for the most important night of the year, New Year’s Eve, most nightlife venue’s doors are currently shut and unable to operate due to COVID-19 restrictions. The worldwide scarcity in nightlife offer has caused an important spike in illegal parties for New Year’s Eve, with little to no health or safety measures.

A power of fast-developing entertainment industry

Clubs in Warsaw and its nightlife plays an important role in modern society and is one of the main players in the Polish entertainment industry, allowing for new experiences with art, music, performance, fashion, and food. Nightlife is key to making cities vibrant and full of light at night since there’s “always something going on” creating a sense of safety when daylight businesses are closed.

In the past decade, due to its increasing demand, nightlife has evolved all around the world creating unique experiences for guests to escape their everyday lives and express themselves. Studies have shown that dancing is a very important part of socializing and has been proven to psychologically make people feel more connected reducing anxiety and stress and obtaining a sense of well-being. This only adds to the fact that clubbers are “starved” and in need of a place to escape the harsh moments that the coronavirus pandemic has caused since March of this year.

Illegal Nightlife offer vs. Legal Nightlife offer

From the International Nightlife Association (which level 27 is an official member), we would like to warn governing authorities about the great risk that comes with not having a regulated nightlife offer, inviting people who are socially starved to organize events and gather in spaces with no regulations or health and safety measures at all. These past weeks, we have detected events being promoted through private and public social media accounts, private forums, dating apps, privately encrypted messaging apps, event apps, and others. It’s important to remind that Apple recently removed an American app from the App Store that promoted private parties during the pandemic.

Hidden parties on a daily basis

The INA has also detected that classified advertisement websites have posts that offer spaces to organize your own party with keywords such as “remote”, “no neighbors”, and “unlimited drinks” which generates a great risk for attendees not only due to the pandemic but for general safety and wellbeing. The events count with a high level of secrecy and confidentiality like revealing the location at last minute, using only encrypted messaging to communicate, secret passwords to know where the event takes place or upon entry, and even placing a sticker on the phone’s camera so the event can’t be recorded.

These illegal parties have already been taking place since the start of the pandemic. It has been a growing problem not only between the clubs in Warsaw but also other venues placed in the biggest European cities. They have been charging large amounts of money for tickets, drinks, and the services offered at the party.

This is not only causing a greater delay for regulated nightlife venues to reopen but also creating unfair competition for most nightlife venues that have shut down and haven’t received any aid from most governing officials. This is also unfair competition for venues that have been allowed to reopen since each government has applied strict measures, measures that have to be fully paid for by nightlife business owners who also have to pay rent, workers, security personnel, insurances, licenses, just to name a few. All of the aforementioned are not paid for or even contemplated in illegal parties also putting the attendees at high risk.