Image counts in the nightlife industry. How your guests look greatly affects that image.

It is common in the industry for venues to enforce a dress code to maintain standards. However, sometimes ‘dress code’ is merely an euphemism for ‘Are you the kind of person we want?’. Too fat? Too old? Too black? Not black enough? “Sorry, you don’t meet with our dress code…”.

In the old days, nightlife operators could get away with that. The people they were turning away weren’t the target clientèle anyway, and how much fuss could they really make?

Things aren’t always so simple these days. Clubbers interact amongst themselves far more today then they could in the past. More importantly, they typically interact these days in systematic ways. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the ever-growing collection of other social networking tools, allow annoyed guests to organize, protest, generate publicity, and ultimately to significantly impact your business in ways that simply wasn’t possible just a few years ago.

Of course, that can work for your business or against it. Take care of your customers and they’ll spread the word and traffic at your venue goes up. Piss them off and, well…

A recent article on BBC news about a Jersey club highlights the potential problem:

She told Newsbeat: “As I approached the crowd a lady came running up to me and shouted, ‘You better be a size eight to 10 otherwise you’re not getting in.”

Two of her friends were refused entry.

Police say they sent extra patrols to the area because an upset crowd had gathered outside the club. No-one was arrested.

It is up to the licensee of a club or pub in Jersey to decide who enters.

Local people unhappy with what happened have set up a group on the social networking site Facebook urging people to boycott the nightclub in future.

It has more than 800 members.

These days, word spreads…