Got a great idea for a club night? Want to run it somewhere sunny? The opportunities are there, says veteran club promoter, Dexter Jones.

Dexter cut his teeth running parties for club and bar workers in Ibiza before moving to Croatian island, Pag, to capitalise on its burgeoning party scene. He says there are many emerging and established locations to choose from if you want to run an event abroad.

“Years ago, if you wanted to put on a party, you would do it in Ibiza. But nowadays people are partying in so many parts of the world, and it’s easier and cheaper to travel, so the opportunities are absolutely there for promoters.”

Whether you should choose somewhere new, or somewhere tried and trusted like Ibiza, will depend on the strength of your brand and whether or not you have an existing audience you’ve built up at home.

As Dexter says, “Location wise, as soon as a place gets saturated you have to start looking at where else you can go. But I wouldn’t put a line through Ibiza because you are guaranteed to have thousands of people already on the island looking to party. You’ve got the footfall there – something to tap into.

“If you go to somewhere like Pag island in Croatia on the other hand, you have to bring your own crowd with you. That’s why festivals like Hideout and Sonus bring 10,000 people with them. Ibiza’s great for learning your trade because you know there are always people about.”

If you don’t have an existing audience, Dexter recommends taking one of two routes – either partnering with another event to fill a bigger venue or starting small.

“If you’re just starting out there’s no way you’re going to bring 2,000 to 3,000 people, and you’ve got to remember that’s the size of the clubs. You need to start collaborating with other festivals and events and build your name.”

He adds: “If you really want to do something just go out and do it, start small. You don’t have to have hundreds of people, you can start in a venue for just 100 people and grow out of it, which is what we did.”

Dexter started running parties in Ibiza in the early 2000’s while working at The Ship Inn, a pub popular with workers, and striking up a friendship with a couple of DJs who lived upstairs.

“The Dirty Rotten DJs were residents at the biggest and most famous event Manumission and I persuaded them to play for us. I went down the West End in San Antonio one night at 2am saying, ‘We’ve got the resident DJs of Manumission playing, come along.’ It was a small bar for about 150 people, but we had queues of about 300 people going around the block. It was wild and we did three or four weeks of these.

“The police finally had enough and shut it down. It was ridiculous because the pub wasn’t made for it. We did expect that to happen and had made plans to move the parties onto a boat. That turned into a party called Shipwrecked, which went on for several years.”

Dexter’s parties were targeted at workers and started in the morning after the big clubs had shut. They were fun, themed events that encouraged the staff to let their hair down.

He says that theming your party or giving it a USP is essential if you want to succeed in a saturated market.

“You can’t just do what other people are doing,” he says. “But the problem in the industry is people aren’t very original. They hire the same DJs, play the same genre of music, try to book the same artists, all wearing black – where’s the fun in that? We started with a party in The Ship Inn but we put a twist on that by doing an actual boat party. We put a twist on the boat party by having the boat leaving at 6am.”

According to Dexter, while you must do your homework in terms of what music will work in a given location, putting on a good party is about much more than just the music.

“You’ve got to work with decent creatives, not just DJs. You need to entertain. We used to have entertainers in the crowd interacting with people, doing Twister and things like that. The more quirky you make an event, the more it’s going to stick in people’s minds.”

A testament to how memorable Dexter’s workers’ parties were is the Facebook group ‘Ibiza workers 2000-2010’, which he set up in April and garnered half a million engagements in six weeks.

“It was bonkers. Mixmag and Ibiza Club News were talking about it and, off the back of that, we’re now promoting a new event called ‘One More Time’. We’re bringing back all the old brands appearing for one week next October in Ibiza.”

Dexter and his business partners, The Dirty Rotten DJs, built up such a reputation with their events they were soon being invited to host by superclubs like Space, Amnesia, Privilege – and discovered how profitable it could be.

“We were really successful. Myself and the Dirty Rotten DJs made enough money from the parties that we could live off them for the whole winter. We never charged any door price at all, except the boat parties. We worked off commission from the bar, they’d give us a negotiated percentage – ten, fifteen or even twenty per cent – but because we were bringing so many people to the event we made really good money from it.”

According to Dexter, new club nights can be staged with minimal financial risk by working closely with a venue partner, as well as collaborating with others in a joint venture.

“I don’t recall ever paying for venue hire or DJs at the very start because the two that worked for us were partners. A lot of DJs are over in places like Ibiza to cut their teeth so many of them are willing to collaborate.

He adds: “If you get a good venue that really wants to work with you it can be a dream. Generally, you find if you’re a new promoter a venue will not give you a night that’s working very well. If they know Monday to Wednesday is always quite busy, they’ll give you Thursday, Friday or Saturday because it’s less of a risk for them. You’ve got to work hard at your relationships with venues as it’s massively important.”

Dexter spent months building relationships with venues in Pag before the opportunity to host an event there finally arose. He recalls: “I started hounding them but they didn’t get back to me for such a long time.

“I made a move to leave Ibiza and went back to England but I kept reaching out to these clubs. Eventually, they contacted me. At this time I was working with the guys behind Good Grief, Eddie Halliwell and Fire it Up, some UK brands that were doing really well and they made us an offer of coming over and doing a residency of six events.”

If you want to run an event abroad, Dexter says it’s well worth partnering with a local who can help you make the connections you need. After eight years organising events in Croatia, Dexter now acts as a fixer through his agency Pag Digital Media.

“It’s really wise to have someone working with you from that country,” he says. “Although I’ve always found their English to be immaculate everywhere I’ve worked, it’s just easier to open doors. Secondly, paperwork can be a real hassle so you do need someone who understands the rules and regulations inside out, especially if you’re getting a bit bigger.”

In terms of marketing, Dexter recommends really trying to drill into your demographic online. “If you’re a relatively new night, digitally it would be very prudent to tap into your market using Facebook ads. They allow you to target your audience very accurately,” he says. “But posters, flyers and PR staff on the ground also play an important role. We used to have parades of dancers and entertainers. You need to have the budget for it but this type of activity can really help get attention.”

Finally, to find success in a new market, says Dexter, you just have to be prepared to experiment. “You’ve just got to have some balls,” he says. “Even the biggest promoters you can think of, I guarantee they have had big losses at some point but it’s just a case of bouncing back again.”

Want more tips on selling out your next event? Check out our guide to doing just that!