Club Judge
About Club Judge
Club Judge is the official quality mark for clubs since 2004. Club Judge rates clubs such as discotheques, nightlife centres and pop temples where mainly will be danced during the night on music of dj’s and these clubs must have a minimum capacity of 300 visitors. Meanwhile, all the clubs in The Netherlands and Ibiza are affiliated with Club Judge. Besides that, Club Judge publishes every month market and trend research about nightlife which receives nationwide media attention and Club Judge published in 2010 the book ‘The 100 best clubs of The Netherlands’. Club Judge furthermore provides consultancy to clubs in a wide range of areas, such as: renewal of the marketing and strategic planning, the redesigning of the club till developing websites. In 2010 Club Judge also founded a website for the dance scene under the name Betribes which is being visited by more than 400.000 unique visitors per month.
The official quality mark for clubs
The quality mark of Club Judge consists of eleven criteria from which the clubs will be judged on, that is: hygiene, beverages, programming of entertainment, capacity, entrance fee, checkroom, opening hours, light, sound and image quality, crowd, (fire) security and location. Bases on these criteria, an average amount of stars will be calculated and presented on this websites and Betribes.com in the following manner:
Undercover Judges are helping Club Judge and the club
The Club Judge crew isn’t judging the clubs by itself. The clubs are also being rated by their visitors, the so called ‘Undercover Judges’ by filling in questionnaires. After a night of partying , they will judge the clubs and describe their personal experiences. How did you experience the hospitality of the bartenders and the bouncers? How fast were you served at the bar? This are a few of the questions that they answer, for which they receive in return the possibility to win free entrance tickets on Betribes.com. In this manner, the visitors are also influencing the nightlife. Promoters, club owners and party organizers have a permanent benefit because of the Undercover Judge system, since it provides insight in the opinion of the visitors and gives possibilities to improve for the club and the party.
Market and trend research
The results that are derived from the judgments and experiences of the Undercover Judges are also being used to do market and trend research about nightlife and related areas. As a result, numerous national news agencies and news providers such as NOS, RTL, De Telegraaf, Metro, De Pers and ANP are using the research of Club Judge for news articles, for example: the policy and ban on smoking, earlier closing times, the popularity of erotic parties, hygiene and the use of alcohol in traffic.
History
Founder Joël Goudsmit notices in 2002 during his study at the University of Hospitality Management that for restaurants, hotels and bars different organizations are active to safeguard the quality of the catering, but there isn’t a quality mark for clubs. In 2004, under the name Club Judge Joël Goudsmit develops by himself a quality mark on which the Dutch clubs can be judged. From the first moment Club Judge is being supported by interest groups such as The Royal Catering of The Netherlands and the Institute for Hallmarks. Besides that, in 2004 Club Judge also launches the website Clubjudge.com which publishes the extensive judgments and descriptions of the clubs. In the following years Club Judge adds all kinds of activities and features on its website: publishing the most complete nightlife calendar, party photos and videos, dance news, interviews, columns, providing thousands of entrance tickets for free, live audio and video streams of parties in clubs and much more. Furthermore, Club Judge promoted numerous companies on the radio, print, press and TV, By now, all the clubs in The Netherlands and Ibiza are affiliated with Club Judge and Club Judge will soon rate different clubs abroad. 
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