Beach clubs are the ultimate destination for sun and fun by the seaside. These luxury venues offer comfort, infinity pools, amazing food and drink, entertainment and more. And occasionally, the “more” is something you’d rather not experience.
While the beach club industry is remarkably scandal-free when you consider how much alcohol it sells each year, it’s not 100% free of controversy, and here we’ve rounded up the five most scandalous moments in beach club history. And because we’re thorough, we’ve added five others at the end that are nearly as fascinating.
The 5 Most Incredible Beach Club Scandals In History
Mia Restaurant And Beach Club, Tulum, Mexico – Double Murder
We like to think of beach clubs as relaxing, fun-filled places full of charm, conversation and good times.
So, it comes as a shock to us that in some parts of the world, there’s a risk that somebody’s day, instead of going with a bang at a beach club, will end with one.
In Tulum, Mexico, they have a very highly developed beach club scene, but Mexico also has one of the world’s most incredible homicide rates, with the national average at 23.3 deaths per 100,000 people per year due to murder. Some towns, such as Colima, have an incredible 181.94 deaths per 100,000 people per year.
these static became very real to the folks at Mia Restaurant and Beach Club when four gunmen walked into the beach club, executed a known criminal, as well as an American attorney who happened to be in the club at the same time.
It’s probably the only beach club in the world to have a tripadvisor riview dedicated to the murders.
This isn’t the first double murder in Tulum, either. in 2021, a German woman and an Indian woman died, and three other tourists were injured in a shootout between rival drug cartels.
And between 2022 and 2023, the last year that official figures are available for as we go to press, there was a huge increase in murders in the area of 14.6% year on year!
It’s also not the only shooting to result in a death at a beach club in Tulum; the Taboo Beach Club also saw a fatal shooting of a single individual in 2024.
Nikki Beach (Now Closed) Phuket, Thailand – Animal Cruelty
It’s hard to see how a major international brand like Nikki Beach could think it was a good idea to rent out baby elephants for rides at its Phuket Beach Club, but apparently, someone there did
Unsurprisingly, the terrible optics of this idea quickly made themselves known, and photos of a drunken young man astride one baby elephant while clutching a beer appeared with the terrified-looking animal on a small bridge by the pool.
In another instance, a baby elephant was seen to be trapped by a group of women partying all around it. Then another image leaked of a woman in a bright pink wig waving a bottle of wine atop the baby elephant at a pool party.
This went down about as well as you could expect with the animal lovers of Phuket, and the club was criticised soundly by animal lovers, animal rights activists and the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand.
Not bad for a beach club that had opened its doors only a few months previously.
They did, finally, relent and decide that they would no longer be using the baby elephants at the beach club, but it seems that it came too late; Nikki Beach Phuket closed it doors soon afterwards, having been in business on the island for less than a year.
Holywings (Now Atlas Beach Club), Canggu, Bali – Double Blasphemy
Bali in Indonesia feels like a pretty liberal place. There’s drinking, partying and pretty girls galore wandering around in various states of undress.
It’s all too easy to forget that the local Hindu culture is quite conservative and that the wider Islamic culture of the Republic of Indonesia is conservative and increasingly becoming hardline in defence of its religious values.
Atlas Beach Club, which has regularly advertised as the world’s largest beach club (though officially this title has now been taken away by Sirene by GAIA in Dubai), was originally known as Holywings Beach Club.
Holywings is a large chain of bars and clubs in Indonesia, and just before their new flagship beach club was due to open, they decided to run one of the most ill-advised promotional campaigns in Indonesian history.
The company advertised that people called with Mohammad (men) or Maria (women) would be able to claim a free bottle of gin in their outlets every Thursday.
This did not go down well with religious hardliners in Jakarta who demanded that the group be prosecuted for blasphemy (Mohammad is, of course, the name of the main prophet in Islam and Maria is the mother of Isa – Jesus – who is also considered holy in Islam).
The entire chain of bars and clubs was closed under government order, and while it was permitted to reopen, eventually, one of the conditions of that reopening was that Holywings Beach Club would be rename as Atlas Beach Club.
Incredibly, in 2025, Atlas Beach Club featured a DJ performance that used a backdrop of a Hindu God as part of the set.
This triggered a second outcry over blasphemy , as the Republic of Indonesia has 6 official religions, and that includes the Hindu faith in Bali.
In the end, the nightclub on this site was forced to close for a period of time, and the company’s apologies for this oversight were accepted by the local community, and business returned to normal.
Bailey’s Beach Club, Newport, USA – The Senator And White Supremacy Scandal
Perhaps the biggest scandal ever linked to a beach club is one that seems quite trivial unless you’re into American politics.
Bailey’s Beach Club in Newport, USA is thanks to its catchment area and fees, is famous for the fact that its membership is all white. There is no suggestion that the club has done anything wrong to bring this about.
However, in the current culture war environment of the USA, all white has to be seen as “bad” by half the electorate, and even being associated with the local culture can turn something ordinary into a big event.
So, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse found himself the subject of national news when his membership in this beach club came to light.
Allegedly, the senator had known that this might be a problem and had pledged to quit the club when he got elected, but a decade later was still a member. Though the senator denies this.
It’s possible that the underlying cause of this “scandal” is that the senator spends a lot of his time in Washington decrying “institutional racism”, but for those who live outside of the US much of this feels like a storm in a teacup even if it is the biggest news story about a beach club, so far, in history.
Mamitas Beach Club, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico – Mysterious Murder Of Manager
The manager of Mamita’s in Playa del Carmen was working his usual Tuesday evening shift when things ended in tragedy
Frederico Mazzoni, an Argentinian national, was shot twice, and his body was discovered on the floor in the restaurant’s bathroom.
While there was no immediate suggestion that this was due to money owed or other disagreement, the fact that the two gunmen fled the scene in a speedboat suggested that the murder was very much pre-planned.
This murder came just hours after other incidents in Mexico, which led to the US Consulate General in Merida releasing a statement, “In light of recent security incidents and criminal activity in popular tourist destinations including Cancún, Playa Del Carmen, and Tulum, U.S. citizens are reminded to exercise increased caution when travelling to the state of Quintana Roo. Criminal activity and violence may occur throughout the state, including areas frequented by U.S. citizen visitors,” it read.
Incredibly, this was the fifth beachfront shooting in Quintana Roo in the previous three months. This is something everyone should bear in mind before booking a flight to Mexico and its beach club scene.
Other Major Scandals In Beach Club World
There was a gang rape on a beach in Florida, next to a popular beach club.
In Gran Canaria, a collection of Real Madrid football players is alleged to have sexually assaulted an underage girl in an unnamed beach club.
A lawsuit plaintiff alleged that a partner in Nikki Beach Miami sent her to the home of the President of Turks & Caicos, knowing that she would be drugged and raped. Nikki Beach vehemently denied this at the time, and given that the lawsuit seems to have evaporated into thin air, that’s probably true.
In a horrific tragedy at the Medusa Beach Club in Playa de Palma, Majorca, the building collapsed, killing at least four people and injuring 25 more.
Beach Club II Hallandale at 1830 South Ocean Drive was the scene of a horrific murder-suicide.
FAQs
Are Beach Clubs Safe?
Yes, as a general rule, beach clubs around the world are very safe environments. Though we admit, we’d perhaps skip the beach clubs of Mexico until the murder rate there starts to come down a little.
But statistically speaking, you are far more likely to come to harm at home than you are in your average beach club.
We would also note that you can improve on your chances of having a great time at a beach club by keeping an eye on your drinks, avoiding people who seem like they can’t handle their drink and by ensuring that you take safe transport home at the end of the day or night.
Are Scandals At Beach Clubs Common?
No, not very common. As beach clubs are in the business of entertaining and selling food and alcoholic drinks, some problems are to be expected, but overall, there’s no doubt that beach clubs are no more scandalous than restaurants, bars and nightclubs and often far less scandalous.
Final Thoughts On Beach Club Scandals
We want to end with an important note. In all human endeavours, things go wrong. People make mistakes or go completely off the rails.
But these isolated incidents, as interesting or entertaining as they may be, do not reflect any kind of truth about the overall business.
Take Atlas, here in Bali, for example, we don’t believe that as Holywings they went out to offend the very people they were hoping would be their customers, any more than we believe that in their current incarnation, they went out to offend the people of the island that they are based on.
They just had a couple of moments where nobody saw the potential deeper ramifications of fairly surface-level activities.
It’s almost impossible to believe that a murder or sexual assault in a beach club is a reflection of the team and the business behind that club, either.
So, while we hope you were entertained by this list (we certainly enjoyed doing the research for it),. We hope that you don’t use it to hold grudges against any of the clubs here that still entertain guests; that’s not our intention at all
