The future: What do pink dollars want??
Quote:
Originally Posted by
sglad
However, when the Covid dust has settled, Pattaya venue owners will have to take a long, hard look at future market trends and see where potential customers are likely to come from and what they're looking for. Pattaya bars were already dying long before Covid. They are at least five years behind Bangkok venues in terms of re-inventing and adapting themselves to what current pink dollar spenders want.
Sglad, thanks for this post. Well, I'm not so sure the "Covid dust" will ever quite settle, i.e. that things will ever quite be the same again. Times have changed. Risks have changed. Technology has changed. I doubt whether our pink world will ever quite be the same ever again. But this is both a worry and an opportunity.
What do pink dollars really want? For at least the past decade we have all witnessed the decrease in young gay tourists/residents in Pattaya. Even the welcome boost in young Asian foreign visitors has not compensated for the decline in other races. Even us old stick-in-the-muds have largely abandoned the current venues. They are often, frankly, boring, loud and not particular clean. (We live in a Covid world remember.)
We can be nostalgic when recalling the raunchy fleshpots of the past, or we can try to influence the next iteration of gay life to be something which more fits the times. I for one would like to support gay venues which are more transparent, in which the workers keep more of the money which is generated, and the corrupt police and the underworld keep less.
The arrival of the apps was an interesting moment, but with them came some new dangers and frustrations. At least the current apps are not yet a satisfactory answer IMO. I think we can dream of better if we were to put together our collective imaginations. Anybody got any great ideas to share?
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
personally I find the apps a Godsend...I always clarify what I want and expect and ask for photos...face as well as front and rear naked....if the delivery does not match the "menu" then I either renegotiate or decline...but tbh...most cases the delivery matches the menu and I dont have an issue...love the apps.
Very rarely have I offed MBs from a gogo bar...I do enjoy the shows and love watching them parading on the stage...also really enjoy the hands on establishments in sunnee....love the sleaze...will miss that if it dissapears...but when it comes to finding sex apps rule.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Marc K
For at least the past decade we have all witnessed the decrease in young gay tourists/residents in Pattaya.
I have been travelling to Pattaya - and, less frequently, to Bangkok - several times every year since 1993. With (1) its heavy preponderance of money boys over genuinely gay and non-money boys, (2) its lack of the sort of gay clubs found in any western city, and (3) the absence of much in the way of any other reason (a clean beach, for instance!) to go there, Pattaya has never, in my view, been a place to attract younger gay tourists. It's become well established as a niche destination that offers older, unattached gay men with plenty of pink pounds (a much more neatly alliterative term than gay dollars) a form of rest and recreation exactly matched to their requirements.
While it's sometimes said that the Pattaya gay scene's customer base will soon die out, that ignores the fact that even as guys in the, say, 60+ age group are dying at the top end, the pool is being constantly replenished by lonely but affluent 59-year-olds entering their seventh decade at the other.
Maybe Pattaya's gay scene will go on shrinking, but I don't think that the absence of young tourists need, in itself, be taken as evidence of terminal decline.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
"plenty of pink pounds"
Yes indeed. The ones with Elizabeth Regina and the ones around the middle.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
The day off the older gay farang has passed as far as the boy bars are concerned. In Pattaya, albeit several months ago,
the customer base was Asian, male and female in the show bars. Older gay farangs remain dominant in bar beers but I
witnessed many farangs females accompanied by older farang men in the boy beer bars. They’re attracted by cheap hotels,
Jomtien Beach and relatively cheap drink prices. Some families with children as well.
Boyzboyzboyz an example of the power of Asian money, as often they crowd the bar with nary an older farang in sight.
If they don’t return, Boyztown is doomed, just as Sunee Plaza, which was recently abandoned by Belgian owner of Elephant Hotel
and Elephant Bar as well as Double Shot Bar beer. Only Jomtien Complex appears to have a good shot. Many boys there
complain that the older gay men there come to sit together and talk together and don’t ‘off’ boys. The older gay men either have
boyfriends already or use the Apps to save baht. The new crop of 59+ y.o. farangs is far too skimpy to make a difference.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catawampuscat
Only Jomtien Complex appears to have a good shot. Many boys there
complain that the older gay men there come to sit together and talk together and don’t ‘off’ boys. The older gay men either have
boyfriends already or use the Apps to save baht. The new crop of 59+ y.o. farangs is far too skimpy to make a difference.
True catawampus, and many farang complain that the boys only want to play with their phones and not engage the customer.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
Quote:
Originally Posted by
francois
True catawampus, and many farang complain that the boys only want to play with their phones and not engage the customer.
That's what I've also heard.
And apparently they do their best to lure you into the bar and then leave you to sit by yourself while they go and chat with their friends.
What are the bar owners doing about this? It can't be good for business.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
The guys who are attracted to work at the Jomtien bars now are very different to the ones we met in Boyztown in the 90s. I don't wish to get into yet another argument over straight/gay hosts but the lack of genuinely gay Cambodian guys- yes I'm sure there are some- is bound to change the ambience of the Complex. In the past, gay guys would travel from rural Thailand to make money but also to have fun, not only because money was short in the large families of the period but because they wanted to be with other gay Thais.
These were the ones who attracted me in my first few visits and, though some in the same situation are still there, gay life even in rural areas is not quite as bleak as it was thirty or twenty years ago.
Now that I stay in the Complex, I sometime have a drink in host bars and P and I often walk (and sometimes eat) in the area. I like it....it's far more interesting than Boyztown....but it is not "gay" in the way that Boyztown once was. Apart from us remnants of better days.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
a447 wrote.
"And apparently they do their best to lure you into the bar and then leave you to sit by yourself while they go and chat with their friends.
What are the bar owners doing about this? It can't be good for business."
I think the majority of boys working in Jomtien are still looking for offs and offering a good service. The problem down there is it's rather user unfriendly compared to Sunee. Farangs gather boys like a squirrel gathering nuts and ply them with cheap nasty whiskey so offing them can be tricky. Once they're sat round a table with one (sad and lonely alcoholic farang) and their friends then it's pretty much all over for that night.
Also it can be hard to know what's going on in a beer bar with so much coming and going so snaring your prey isn't easy. The boys cone and go all night so the chances of you finding the one you liked the night before is devilishly tricky.
But, patience and the hunting skills of a jaguar will sooner or later reap rewards.
Legendary arsenals hot tip of the day. It's much much easier to spot boys and see their body language and yes, wait for the moment to pounce if you sit in the bar opposite. Sone of those boys down there are free for about 3/4 minutes between customers before they're invited to drink again.
Re: The future: What do pink dollars want??
Quote:
Once they're sat round a table with one (sad and lonely alcoholic farang) and their friends then it's pretty much all over for that night.
Yes, I experienced that many times over the years. Eros was always fun until a farang opened a bottle of whisky. That signalled the end of my night and I went elsewhere.