How Beach Clubs Are Redefining Hotel F&B and Driving ADR Uplift

Beach clubs are no longer a sunbed business. They are increasingly the commercial and cultural engine of modern hospitality, redefining what food and beverage can do for hotels, resorts and mixed-use destinations. As Think Hospitality Partner Jennifer Pettinger Haines framed in a recent panel discussion, the scale of the opportunity is becoming hard to ignore: the global beach club market was estimated at $7.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to more than double to $14.5 billion by 2033.

But the bigger story is not the headline market size. It is the way beach clubs are changing the role of F&B in hospitality. What used to be treated as an on-property amenity is now being deployed as a brand-builder, an ADR lever and, increasingly, a platform that can expand into hotels, residences and entire destination ecosystems.

Beach clubs as multi-vertical hospitality platforms

One theme that emerged immediately is how beach clubs are increasingly embedded within broader portfolios. Ryan Hattingh described an organisation spanning development, hospitality, sports and leisure, investments and now ultra-luxury resorts, including a newly acquired private island in the Maldives. In Dubai alone, his group operates two beach club concepts, one at W The Palm and another at J1, with further projects planned internationally.

This multi-vertical context matters because it reflects how beach clubs are being viewed: not as single venues, but as expandable engines that can travel, scale and support larger real estate strategies. Hattingh later noted that he had just signed a beach club deal in Montenegro, using an existing concept from Dubai. Seasonal markets, he explained, can benefit operators by covering their summer months while delivering value to the host hotel.

The brand journey: from concept to DNA to belonging

Philippe Bassoul of Groupe Barrière offered a simple but powerful distinction: every brand starts as a concept, but a concept only becomes a brand through consistency. Consistency in delivery, service, design and what he referred to as the venue’s “DNA”. That DNA becomes iconic when guests want to follow it and feel a sense of belonging to it.

That sense of belonging is not abstract. Bassoul shared that the Barrière beach club and restaurant brand Lulu generates over $1 million (approximately $1.2 million) in merchandising per summer, despite operating only four months a year. Guests buy caps and keepsakes because they want to take a piece of the memory home. As Bassoul put it, “When you want to belong, you pay.”

It is a telling example of how beach clubs are commercialising experience in ways that traditional hotel F&B often struggles to do. The venue becomes not just a place to eat, but a cultural marker that guests actively want to identify with.

From restaurant success to beach club expansion

Olivier Eynard of RIKAS Hospitality Group explained that not every restaurant brand can be stretched into the beach club arena. Some concepts travel well, others do not. What matters is fit: fit with location, fit with audience and fit with the environment. He pointed to Gigi, which started on a rooftop in Paris and was later extended into Ramatuelle before becoming a strong match for Dubai’s J1.

Eynard emphasised that deploying an iconic brand requires serious investment, both in launch and ongoing upkeep, and that success depends on being extremely careful about location. He also noted that each site must craft a narrative that matches its environment. Even within one brand family, the story must be adapted to the context.

That perspective was echoed by Bassoul, who stressed the importance of being involved early in the process. It is not enough to “put loud music and truffle pizza” into a beachfront setting. The operator needs influence over design, flow, artistic direction, lighting and music. The outcome must make sense to the future clientele before they even arrive.

Brand vs concept: control vs equity

Hattingh described the trade-off clearly. When you create a concept yourself, you have control and flexibility, but you must build awareness from scratch. When you bring in an established brand, you are buying the equity and desirability that already exists, alongside standards and procedures intended to support operation and consistency.

His decision framework starts with the location, then identifies what fits, rather than trying to force a brand into a space. In the case of J1, he and the landlord looked at what was missing. They avoided Mediterranean because the market already had strong Mediterranean concepts. Instead, the chosen concept delivered something different: a day-to-evening-to-dinner-dance proposition designed around experience progression.

“Restaurants with a beach” vs “beach with a restaurant”

One of the most practical operational distinctions came from Eynard. He described two different archetypes: restaurants with a beach and beach clubs with a restaurant. Twiggy, for example, was described as a beach with a restaurant, while other venues operate primarily as restaurants that happen to include beach access.

This distinction matters because it influences everything: service style, pacing, team structure and revenue design. The panel emphasised that a festive beach club cannot be run like a traditional restaurant. In the party-led model, the venue is a stage. Table allocation becomes a form of curation and theatre, not simply a reservation system. As Eynard put it, the operating logic shifts from rigid systems to decisions such as “I’m going to put those people here because they look good, and those people here because they’re going to spend.”

The longer guests stay, the more revenue moments the operator can unlock: lunch, afternoon drinks, then potentially evening bottles. But that only happens if the experience stays relevant long enough to hold the guest.

Nammos: when beach club DNA becomes an ADR and real estate lever

Carolyn Turnbull, CEO of Nammos Hotels & Resorts, described how Nammos is evolving from its Mykonos beach club heritage into an ultra-luxury hospitality platform. Nammos operates a 30-key hotel alongside its Mykonos beach club, is developing within Saudi Arabia’s Amala with Red Sea Global and is planning a Maldives ultra-luxury property for early 2027, including private island villas.

Turnbull pointed to the fundamentals behind Nammos’ stretch into hotels and real estate: longevity, brand equity, cultural influence through collaborations (including partnerships with Dior, Gucci and others) and the financial power the brand can bring to an asset. She cited a year in which Nammos Dubai yielded over $70 million, reinforcing why developers see these concepts as more than F&B. They are performance drivers.

The panel also discussed ADR uplift directly. Jennifer Pettinger Haines referenced an industry view that an international beach club brand can drive up to 20% ADR uplift. Bassoul shared a concrete example: after replacing an existing F&B offer with Lulu in Courchevel, the property’s ADR increased by 40%.

The conclusion across speakers was consistent: sometimes the beach club brand may be operationally expensive, but the value it adds to the overall property can justify it. The impact must be assessed holistically across rooms, F&B mix and destination draw.

The new F&B specialists, swimming in their own lane

A final point underscored a broader industry shift. Bassoul noted that when hotel owners lose faith in hotel F&B, it is often because it fails to draw the local community and remains “just a hotel restaurant”. Beach club operators, by contrast, work the market differently: more locally, more tactically and more nimbly. Eynard described hotel thinking as macro and long-term, while beach club operators work on the micro: local bookers, agencies and quarterly commercial pushes designed to maximise daily outcomes.

The panel’s closing advice was simple, but consistent: location matters, size matters, DNA matters, culture matters and relevance matters. Whether as a brand or a bespoke concept, beach clubs are increasingly proving that if you nail F&B, everything else can follow.

This article is adapted from a panel hosted by Think Hospitality Partner Jennifer Pettinger Haines on how beach clubs are redefining food and beverage, featuring Philippe Bassoul (Groupe Barrière), Olivier Eynard (RIKAS Hospitality Group), Ryan Hattingh and Carolyn Turnbull (Nammos Hotels & Resorts).