Club reopening night a sell-out – in just 37 minutes
1,200 tickets sold for each night over 6 days
FAMOUS Birmingham nightclub Snobs sold out tickets for its reopening night in just 37 minutes – such is the fervour to party after months of lockdown.
The club, on the corner of Smallbrook Queensway and Hurst Street, has also sold all 1,200 tickets for each night over six days.
Owner Wayne Tracey is delighted and vows the nightclub will bounce back from the Covid pandemic – but safely.
Reopening night is currently Monday, June 21, the first date that nightclubs can legally throw open their doors since March last year.
Mr Tracey said the venue will open at about 80 per cent capacity and is awaiting further guidance on masks, social distancing and temperature checks from the Government.
But he said the massive level of interest demonstrates that Birmingham still has an appetite for nightclub culture.
“I’ve got no doubt at all that nightclubs will survive. There will always be an appetite for them,” he said.
“It’s not going to bounce back to what it was straight away. It will be a slow build up, but we will get there.
“People want to get back to what they were doing before. If the Government or anyone else thinks nightclubs are finished they are in a dream world.
“I’m very positive of what Snobs is and what it will come back to.
“I put my tickets on sale for June 21, for the first night, and it was sold out within 37 minutes.
“That was for 1,200 tickets and without social media – it was on my ticket outlet.”
Mr Tracey says nightclubs will not go straight back to how they used to be.
But he remains an “optimist” as he follows the guidance.
“I expect it to go back stage by stage. The Government is expecting to drop all restrictions on June 21 but I’ve thought about what we will do and the numbers I will allow through the door,” he said.
“My venue is about 1,500 capacity, but that is with the full venue open, including the front bar. I won’t allow that in on the first night.”
In 2019 Mr Tracey opened another business – a ‘posh Snobs’ – called Theatrix, followed by Henman and Cooper in Colmore Row.
He is looking to open Snobs at about at 9pm on June 21, with a gradual movement of people through the doors.
“It’s going to cost me more money with extra door staff, but I have to ease people through there,” he said.
“I can’t expect after everything that’s gone on for people to just queue up toe to toe and go through the door.
“That’s not going to happen. People are going to be worried. I’m looking at about 80 to 85 per cent capacity – and you usually get about 10 per cent who buy a ticket and don’t turn up.”
Reflecting on a difficult year, Mr Tracey said it has been hard on everyone and that the Government has had to make some difficult decisions.
But he feels the hospitality sector could have been better helped.
He said: “Do I agree with everything? Probably not – but no-one has a textbook on this have they? I think the way they’ve rolled out vaccines is amazing.
“I do think hospitality could have had some more support. In nightclubs, I think the financial support could have been better with better guidance over what we would and wouldn’t be allowed to do.
“We just seemed to be very dismissed and pushed to the side and forgotten about. But in a lot of it I’m very optimistic of where we’re going to go and what’s going to happen. “The appetite for Snobs is there. We will come back. It just depends on what it comes back to and who with. It’s not about a few single nightclubs or venues around Birmingham city centre – you need a night time economy.
‘‘If they come to Snobs at 10.30pm where do people go first? We all need to bounce off each other as venues.” Snobs received some financial support from Covid grants, but nothing came through during the first six months.