• The discos reopened their doors on July 9th.

  • And the summer allowed the sector to come back to life, as evidenced by Christian Jouny, national delegate of the National Union of discotheques and places of leisure.

  • According to him, "the discotheques have played the game" of the sanitary rules.

After fifteen months of closure due to the health crisis, the discotheques were able to reopen their doors to the public on July 9.

A reopening which had to be accompanied by a specific health protocol, with the implementation of the controversial health pass.

This return to life was eagerly awaited by professionals.

The nightlife, at bay, had indeed multiplied the alerts to the public authorities.

Christian Jouny, national delegate of the National Union of discotheques and places of leisure, takes stock of the situation for

20 Minutes

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After so much waiting, did the reopening of nightclubs go well this summer?

At least in the tourist areas, we finally resumed our activity.

But we were only 25% of the profession to have tried the experience.

A large part remained at a standstill, quite simply because the sanitary constraints were too important.

But in tourist areas, despite the number of customers, attendance was there.

How did the implementation of health measures go?

It was necessary to be able to remedy the lack of vaccination.

If you did not have the opportunity to do antigen tests near the nightclub, you were in an extremely difficult situation.

I experienced this three nights, until I managed to forge a partnership with pharmacists who agreed to come.

In an establishment where we were doing 130 initial tests per night, we went up to 265. So there was a real need.

And at the end of the season, we were at 30 tests per night.

This means that overall, the clientele who frequented us turned to vaccination en masse.

And there were only rare cases of contamination in nightclubs ...

We cannot say that the discotheques did not play the game, that they did not show rigor, or that they were at the origin of a multitude of clusters.

The numbers are there.

Why do you think there have been so many fears about the reopening of nightclubs?

We were the victim of a sulphurous image that sticks to our skin because we have always considered nightclubs to be a separate environment.

But today, at the head of establishments, there are business leaders who know what turnover, net income and gross margin are.

There was real relevance to reopening the discos this summer.

We did not see any overflows. 

Has the reopening of nightclubs made it possible to reduce the number of underground parties?

Absoutely.

I believe that the Covid-19 crisis has made it possible to demonstrate that nightclubs are one of the most supervised, most secure places.

They remain the place in which we can party in complete safety.

At the economic level, the crisis has caused many closures.

Where is the sector today?

We have 142 liquidated establishments.

And 243 in serious difficulty.

I keep my fingers crossed that this recovery takes place under the best possible conditions.

Despite the constraints we have left, that is to say the gauge at 75%, we have a particularly high attendance rate.

We feel this desire to party in the country.

How in the coming months?

When we stopped in March 2020, we were on double-digit growth.

We find a little of these elements.

The average basket has increased, attendance is there, and depending on the gauge, we sometimes have to refuse a certain number of customers.

The problem remains funding.

We need the government to encourage French banks to finance nightclubs because otherwise, the survival of a large number of us is at stake.

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  • Health pass

  • Coronavirus

  • Covid 19

  • Youth

  • Nightclub

  • Economy