ABOUT

History

We first opened our doors in July 2011. After two long years of renovating a couple of old souvenir shops into a nightclub that could hold 600 people. At first, we were opening from 11 pm until 4 am while trying to obtain a nightclub license. We initially collaborated with a Portuguese DJ group in order to hold after-parties from 6 am until 11 am to promote our newly opened club. With only one floor and a step-down to the dance floor, we began to change the nightlife scene in Albufeira. We emerged on the scene with a team of five bartenders and a few thousand euros worth of lights. At the time, there were no nightclubs on the road known as Rua dos Bares (translating quite aptly to Road of Bars). We would be the first, an adventure the founders were more than willing to take on. 

Once 2012 came around, our official licenses were granted. We were now a fully fledge club trying to find our intended clientele. Our founders are English and Portuguese, so initially, they began to look at their age, demographic and nationality. However, at the time, Albufeira was starting to see an influx of young dutch party-goers. And one night, while sitting in the closed restaurant across the way from the entrance of Heaven, the owners overheard a conversation at the neighbouring table about how the travel agency GoFun would like to know who owned that nightclub to collaborate with them. Definitely a case of the right time and right place. After making the initial introduction and discussing the possibilities. We settled on a dutch night every Sunday with GoFun, called Double Dutch. Through this party, we were able to invite Laidback Luke, the Bing Players and Yellow Claw. While the parties hosted with the Dutch in mind were blooming. We continued to cater to all nationalities in Albufeira, with Saturday nights for Spanish tourists and most nights still catering for the majority.

We had house music and EDM that everyone was looking forward to. However, we tried to keep up with the trends by having insane parties like neon splash, a paint party that was the most fun to work in but not the greatest to clean up after. We had an English resident DJ, DJ Wattsie, who loved the club and wanted to see it succeed and knew that to fully capture the dutch market, he would need help. With another stroke of luck, a DJ who happened to love going to Heaven stepped up and, alongside Wattsie began to play the music for the Dutch, DJ YSEA stayed with the club for more than 5 years, and season after season came back with new ways to entertain the dutch youngsters. With his help, we could book the right artists and really take off as a nightclub for Dutch tourists. We needed help deciding which artists to bring from the Netherlands after YSEA phoned a friend who was a hard-style artist he knew as a resident in Lloret del Mar. Outsiders, now more of a friend than just an artist, made connections so that we had access to some of the most famous artists in the Netherlands. 

What started as a small club of 600 people could not continue to stay that size. After four years and increasing amounts of people, the decision to extend the nightclub was made. While there wasn’t any free space around the club, there was free space above. While at the time, there was a trend of having separate rooms in nightclubs to play conflicting music styles. However, we decided that the top floor would still be part of the original club, with a better view of the stage, allowing us to offer VIP Tables. So our new capacity was 1500 people, but we still thought Albufeira was missing something.

There were no real parties during the daytime, and while you could drink on the beach or around your hotel pool, it’s not the same as a pool party. If we could host massive parties at night, why not do some during the daytime too? The idea to put a pool in the garden at the back of the nightclub sprouted. The pool party was originally a collaboration with GoFun that became so big that we had to put on multiple weekly events.