What's the difference in a gogo

There have been more words written about gogos in Thailand - and in Bangkok in particular - than many more worthy subjects. Those words all seem to concentrate on the same things - what is good for the customer - usually the writer. Occasionally, a bar owner pops in to defend some action or the other and sporadically someone like me gets some words of supposed wisdom from a bar owner and passes them on. There has never been a book about how to be a successful whore master; or should I give it a more PC title like How To Run A Gogo. I suppose the reasons for that are simple. Those that fail clearly do not know and those that succeed are too busy counting their immoral earnings to find time to tell others how to do it!
But fear not, this article is not about how to, but about the competing styles of running a gogo. I call them the farang way and the Thai way - simply because that is what they are. On the surface there looks to be very little difference but underneath there is a fundamental conflict of styles. This time of the year has gogo owners salivating for high season profits and many now put up bar fines. Not, as most think, to make more profit from the bar fines, but to stop the bar fines. Farang bar owners started this because they realised that a gogo bar with no dancers, if they have all been bar fined, is no attraction at all. But there are some, and I would suggest the Thai Rainbow group, or the Thai owned Kings Group, who would have less problem with that. Their rational would be we have sold out and what we needed was more stock. And thereby stands the difference. The No Name Group, or the many farang operated gogos in Pattaya, would never run out of stock, as they see it, for stock is what you sell from the bar.
Farangs do not really want to be whore masters. They want to run a bar in which the main business is the sale of alcohol and the ancillary is girls. Whereas Thais are not kidding themselves - all they want to do is to sell girls. Farangs want to nurture their girls and be their friends: Thais do not care about their staff as long as they get enough 'offs.' A dancer in a Thai-owned bar can barely pick and choose. Watch in a Rainbow bar as the mamasungs come round and pluck girls off a pole to go with a customer. On the other hand I have had farang owner freely say that it is up to girl if she goes with a customer, or not. Nevertheless, they still enforce ‘off’ quotas and the first thing they count is the 'offs.'
Of course all gogos are effectively run by Thais. A Farang owner has little input in certain areas. It is the Thai mamasung and Thai managers that deal with the detail, and in many cases the Thai wife, be it common law, that decides who gets those key jobs. And if that is the case, family members inevitably get into key positions making the farang owners position even more difficult, and his decision making even more limited. But the only place the farang does get his fair say, because it is normally his money, is on numbers of girls employed and the salary they get as well as the general price structure. All this is different in a Thai-owned business as the Thai owners will call all the shots and expect their decision to be stuck to and not watered down or altered. So in that sense, Thai's are much more in control of their business than a farang.
However a farang is much more in touch with the customer. Successful farang owned gogos and bars have a farang who is very much in evidence - he is the meeter and greeter of that bar. There is no doubt that a gogo bar with a farang manager benefits from that manager in terms of customer relations. On top of that he can keep his finger on the pulse of the business and sense customer satisfaction. I find it incomprehensible that all large farang owned gogo bars do not have a farang manager. The argument that it costs too much is invalid when the cost of the bar going wrong is considered. There have been a couple of gogos in Nana Plaza in the last 12 months that have suffered seriously from the loss of farang management. In one case the management have realised that, and wisely introduced new farang management. In the other case, the downhill movement continues. So the input of farangs into a gogo bar brings close contact with the customers that builds up customer loyalty through that contact. Thai owned gogos do not have that advantage, so a good Thai operator packs his bar with girls and sell them by the score. Result? More bar fines but less in booze sales.
So partly through an inevitable difference in style and partly through a perception of what is socially acceptable, farangs sell a party with plenty of booze and dancing girls who are encouraged to enjoy as well as provide off-premises trysts. Thai's sell the same dancing girls with or without the party but with off-premises activity the main attraction.