UPDATES TO FOLLOW. Vision speak to Salvation about how these ‘price wars’ are undesirable but they have no choice.
York nightclubs have been engaged in a ‘price war’, making efforts to undercut one another with cheap alcohol in an attempt to take control of the student market.
YUSU Democracy and Services Officer, Dan Walker described the recent competition between some of York’s biggest student nightclubs: “Salvation and Tokyo started doing ’75p drinks’ some time ago, but when Mansion, or Ziggy’s, moved to ’69p drinks’, some of the other clubs like Salvation, Tokyo and Gallery, replied by introducing £5 entry but 50p drink nights.” He remarked, “this kind of situation has been brewing for some time now.”
Official YUSU club nights have faced reasonable competition from incredibly cheap club nights such as ’75p drinks at Salvation on Thursdays’, ’69p drinks at Mansion on Fun House Thursdays’, and ’99p drinks at Tokyo on Tuesdays’.
Walker expressed concern over the current situation, stating, “We have to consider how the current price war affects our students. Although we always want to get the best deal for our members, we have to ask whether 50p is a responsible price point for an alcoholic drink, and whether such a culture could place students in danger.”
Alcohol Concern have spoken out against ‘price wars’ in recent years, urging pubs and clubs to compete “on the basis of their facilities, entertainment and atmosphere, rather than who can offer the cheapest booze.”
Vision, spoke to Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern who commented directly on the situation in York: “These sort of cut-price deals are clearly irresponsible and should be stamped out. It’s one thing to offer deals for students, it’s quite another to use alcohol as a price war to attract custom.
“International research shows that cheap alcohol is directly linked to alcohol related deaths and alcohol is the biggest cause of young adults deaths. Local councils must be given the power to put a stop to this sort of irresponsible retailing.”
Second year student and member of Vanbrugh JCRC, Damian Allinson, was less concerned: “Vanbrugh college went to one of the cheap nights on a bar crawl, as we were let in for less and got some good drinks deals. It’s a useful way for clubs and societies to get good deals, if they can promise promoters they’ll bring a number of people along to an unofficial night, however it does mean you have a less ‘studenty’ feel, and it undercuts YUSU.”
According to Walker, YUSU will be approaching clubs over the next week or so to discuss next years’ deals. Walker did, however, comment, “It’s pretty clear that while three of the club nights have been very successful, one has suffered. Perhaps we don’t have the student numbers for four nights!” Fibbers on Monday has been less than successful this year, and few anticipate its return next year.
Absolutely mad spin on competition providing better value for money for York students. Obviously lower prices give us far too much freedom, whatever was I thinking before?
Oh No?! Competition pushing down prices, How awful!
If people are immature enough to destroy themselves with alcohol then theyll do it regardless of pice
Lower drinks benefit the sensible majority who have a good time without needing an ambulance.
If prices go up people complain about it
If prices go down people complain about it
why cant we just be happly that the market is giving students better value for money
The cheap drink offers are usually spirit + mixer based offers and the spirits are incredibly weak and taste obviously watered down… you get full up before you get alcohol poisoning!
Usual patronising rubbish from Alcohol groups and YUSU.
Don’t blame the clubs for offering cheap drinks, blame the students, if they get into a state.
Cheap drinks give students a choice. They can buy lots of drinks and get hammered or they could have a few drinks and come home without a burning hole in their pockets.
Blaming the clubs and encouraging them to raise prices is not in students’ interests. Nightlife in York isn’t exactly cheap when compared to other big university cities, why make it worse by interfering with the few cheap nights we have?
It’s not YUSU’s role to moralise about the availability of drinks. People have the right to buy drinks if they want to, either YUSU competes with clubs or prices its drinks out of range and looses money.
this price war is not just for students that why its on a fri and sat if the gal night club put there prices back up and stop been pettie so will tokyo and salvo if the clubs wanna loose money let them i say lets see wich 1 gets shut down 1st then there will be a big diffrence
My dad’s just sold his shares in Luminar (Parent company of The Gallery) Luminar face a covenant test at the end of August. One which father thinks they will fail. He says this would mean forclosure on the £87,000,000 bank debt.
When September arrives, it is quite possible there will be no more Gallery.
As for The Mansion, I much prefered it pre turning the basement into a mortuary. Even if it does have the authentic smell of rotting corpses.
Cheap booze is awesome! It allows me to escape from my crappy life at a decling university with a bunch of duck raping retards. Why did i pick to study maths at uni? why????
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Now I’m no economics student, but this is not a good thing:
http://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChart.asp?sharechart=LMR
If you look at the past five or three years you see how dramatic it really is too. It’s no wonder then that The Gallery are desperate to do literally anything to get anyone through their doors and generate any tiny amount of revenue they can, sometimes after not even charging door entry.
The problem is that other clubs HAVE to follow suit to stay somewhat competitive. Whether when you have to ‘play the game’ responding to a company that is on the brink of dropping off the radar is a good thing is yet to be seen.
@Pav, holy crap! Should have shorted that mofo in June 07, would have made a killing
Maybe if they actually made their club’s any good then they wouldn’t need to charge such cheap prices. I for one would rather pay 2-3 quid a drink and see a big name DJ, than 75p with a mediocre at best DJ.
At the moment all York has is chart and cheese in abundance… and no interest in offering anything else. Same music week in, week out. Boring.