Hiring a Private Venue in Bangkok, and What It Costs

Ask six organisers in Bangkok what a private venue costs. You will get six articles listing seven kinds of venue.

Pool villa. Hotel suite. Rooftop bar. Yacht. Nightclub. Private dining room.

Very nice. What does it cost.

Here is the version with the numbers in it. There are three things a group can actually hire in this city.

They cost very different amounts. Two of them are usually the wrong choice for twelve men.

Every figure below is for the whole group. VAT is already inside it. None of them is an estimate.

One: a private room inside a working venue

This is the one most groups actually want. It is also the one they ask for last.

A private room sits inside a venue that is open and busy. It has its own door, its own sound system, its own waiter and soundproof walls.

At The PIMP there are ten named rooms. The small VIP is ฿3,500 and takes four men. The large VIP is ฿6,000 and takes eight.

Party rooms one, three and four are ฿10,000 each and take thirty. Each has a pool table, a private DJ at no charge and a private jacuzzi.

Party room two is ฿9,000 and takes ten. The pool zone is ฿15,000 and holds up to 150.

The pool zone has a private pool a metre and a half deep, with its own stage in it.

Every one of those is a price for the whole night. Not for an hour. It holds provided the room's minimum number of hostesses is present.

That sentence changes how the whole thing reads. You are not renting time. You are holding a room until you are finished with it.

The rooms carry a Quest or NEXO sound system, a fifty-five inch screen and a computer with YouTube and Spotify on it.

The karaoke system has more than fifty thousand songs in Thai, English and Japanese. Korean and Chinese systems go in on request with a day's notice.

Every large VIP and every party room has its own pool table.

Two: a whole-venue buyout, which you probably do not want

A buyout is an entire rooftop, restaurant, bar or beach club, closed to everybody who is not with you.

Groups ask for it by name. It is also the thing we talk them out of most often.

Buyouts are quoted from ฿35,000 for twenty to forty people. Almost always as a minimum food and beverage spend rather than a rent.

That distinction matters. You are not paying for the building.

You are guaranteeing the venue what a normal night would have taken. Then you drink it.

The problem with a buyout is not the price. It is the arithmetic of atmosphere.

Twelve men in a rooftop bar built for two hundred is twelve men in an empty rooftop bar. The venue's own crowd was half of what you came for.

A buyout works at thirty people and upwards. A stag lunch, a welcome dinner, a pool afternoon where the group is the whole point.

It does not work at twelve on a Friday night. We will say so.

Three: a villa or a boat you already hold

The third kind is not really a venue. It is a space you have already booked, with a party built inside it.

A party-allowed villa for eight to sixteen people runs ฿18,500 for the night.

A private boat on the Chao Phraya is ฿27,000 for three hours, with up to twenty-five aboard. A Pattaya yacht or catamaran is ฿49,000 for an eight-hour day.

None of those arrive with sound, staff, a bar or anybody running the room.

Sound and staffing for a villa or a boat starts at ฿18,000. An event host to run the room for eight hours starts at ฿7,800.

Two lines on a villa are not ours and never carry our margin.

The event fee, typically about one night's rate, goes to the property. The ฿20,000 security deposit is held by the villa and comes back to you after checkout.

The minimum spend is the price, and it is not a fee

This is the mechanic that catches every group. It is not a Bangkok invention.

Every serious nightlife city on earth works the same way. So it gets one paragraph here, not five.

A minimum spend is your drinks budget, not a cover charge. You are told a figure and you order against it. What you order is what you drink.

At The PIMP, non-members run to a minimum of ฿10,000 to ฿20,000 per VIP or party room. Or ฿7,500 to ฿12,500 per sofa. Or ฿3,000 per person at the bar or a VIP table.

Food and beverage only. There is no entrance fee.

Prices are net with VAT inside them. No service charge is added on top.

So the real floor for a large party room is not ฿10,000. It is the room, plus a minimum spend the room has to absorb.

Bottles start at ฿6,000. Liquor packages start at ฿20,000, which saves roughly thirty per cent against buying them one at a time.

A four-bottle package clears a room minimum on its own.

Move after two in the morning and the room costs forty per cent less

The best trick in this city is a timing trick. Nobody advertises it.

Open or move to a room after two in the morning and you save forty per cent on the room.

The reason it works is structural. The live zone runs three bands a night from ten until three.

There are local and international DJs, a cosplay show at weekends, and over two hundred party models working the floor.

The live zone closes at three. The private rooms do not, and stay open long after it does.

So the good version of the night is not a room from ten.

It is the live zone while the live zone is worth being in. Then a room at two, at forty per cent off, running on after the club has shut.

You get the crowd, and then you get the door.

What we will not do

We will not put eight men in a room built for 150. We have watched it happen and it is bleak.

We will not sell you a buyout when the minimum spend is more than your group is going to drink.

You would pay for it either way, and resent us for it.

And we will not quote you a room while staying quiet about what sits underneath it.

A room at ฿10,000 with a ฿20,000 minimum and an entertainment booking on top is a real number.

Groups are happy with it when they see it early. They are furious about it when they see it at the table.

What it costs, in one place

Rooms, and what sits under them

| What you are hiring | Price | |---|---| | Small private room at The PIMP, up to 4 men | ฿3,500 | | Large VIP room, up to 8 men | ฿6,000 | | Large party room, up to 30 men | ฿10,000 | | Pool zone, up to 150 men | ฿15,000 | | Room minimum spend, non-members, food and beverage | ฿10,000–฿20,000 | | Room opened or moved to after 2:00am | 40% less |

Buyouts, villas and the people who run them

| What you are hiring | Price | |---|---| | Rooftop, restaurant or bar buyout, 20 to 40 people | from ฿35,000 | | Party-allowed villa, 8 to 16 people, one night | ฿18,500 | | Chao Phraya private boat, 3 hours, up to 25 aboard | ฿27,000 | | Sound and staffing for a villa or boat space | from ฿18,000 | | Event host to run the room, 8 hours | from ฿7,800 |

How long it takes, and how to start it

Two or three days for a room. Longer for a buyout.

Somebody at the venue has to work out what a closed night actually costs them. That is a conversation, not a price list.

Korean or Chinese karaoke needs a day's notice.

Tell us the date, the number of men and the kind of space you want.

You get availability and a figure the same day, in chat, in writing. A card deposit holds the room.

If it changes, tell us more than forty-eight hours out and we move the booking at no cost.

Inside that window we will try. On a Saturday in December we will probably fail, because the room has gone to somebody else.

The PIMP is at 496 Rotchanamin Alley, Pracha Uthit Road, Wang Thonglang.

It is our signature venue, and the only gentlemen's club we recommend, exclusively. It is not our company.

Bangkok Bachelor Party is the organiser. You book with us, and it comes on one invoice.