Atlas Beach Club may be the most controversial beach club in Bali. It was shut down immediately after its initial launch due to a careless alcohol promotion and forced to rebrand.
Then, more recently, it was in trouble again, this time for allowing a DJ to use the Balinese Hindu religion as a backdrop to a set.
The club, which originally billed itself as the “world’s largest beach club”, has gone out of its way to try to attract Indonesian visitors, but has never quite reached the critical mass that it needs to be a huge success.
Nonetheless, our team was looking forward to exploring this beach club in more detail for a review session, and they packed their day bags and headed to Atlas, and this is what they learned there.
Introduction – Getting To Atlas Beach Club
The biggest challenge with getting to Atlas for most people is going to be getting to Bali. Australian and Southeast Asian visitors will find that they typically have a short flight to Denpasar airport.
Visitors from further afield may find it’s a longer flight, but there is some good news to offset this: Bali is much cheaper than most other major beach club destinations.
That means you can often save the costs of the flight (or the costs of an upgrade to business class) after the costs of your hotel, beach clubbing, dining, etc. have been taken into account.
Then, Atlas is on Berawa Beach in Canggu. Its next-door neighbour is the world-famous, world’s best beach club, FINNS Beach Club, in fact. So, if you pop into Atlas and don’t find it to your taste, you can always head a door down and party with the cool kids.
There’s plenty of parking available at Atlas, and if you’re arriving in a Grab or Gojek (the two most popular ride-sharing apps in Bali), it’s easy to get dropped close to the door here.
Where Is Atlas Beach Club? Jl. Pantai Berawa No.99, Canggu, Kec. Kuta Utara, Kabupaten Badung, Bali 803
Online: Atlas Beach Club
Opening Hours: Open daily, every day except for Nyepi (this is the Balinese Day of Silence and it happens once a year in either March or April), from 10 a.m. to 12 midnight.
What’s Available At Atlas Beach Club?
Atlas is a big beach club, and there are several components to the setup. There’s the main beach club, the new bikini club (which appears to be rather judiciously modelled on their more successful competitor’s new offering in Berawa), the SuperClub, plus bar and restaurant facilities throughout.
There’s also a Holywings store on site. Holywings is a big brand in Indonesia, and it operates the Atlas brand among many other clubs and restaurants in Jakarta.
The store sells fashion items, but a recent promotion featuring Bintang t-shirts for 450,000 IDR sets the scene for how pricey it is – similar shirts sell for 100,000 IDR or less (depending on your haggling skills) on the streets around Atlas.
Our Detailed Review Of Atlas Beach Club
We implement a uniform method for evaluating each beach club to promote fairness for owners, management, and staff, and to deliver reviews in a consistent structure that facilitates easy comparisons between locations.
The review process is conducted as follows:
- A review team is chosen to assess the venue.
- All members are required to visit the beach club, though they may visit individually and on separate days.
- At the venue, each reviewer completes a scorecard, assigning the club a score from 1 (lowest quality) to 5 (highest quality) across predefined categories, while also documenting their observations.
- Once all scorecards are submitted, the team convenes to review their findings and finalise category scores.
- A selected team member then composes the review, incorporating the team’s consensus and scores, before it is shared on our website.
Reservation and Booking Process
We actually think that Atlas has a pretty good booking engine. OK, it throws too many options at you when you get started, so if you don’t know how it’s laid out inside, it can be hard to work out where the best seats are, but there are a lot of seats to choose from.
However, you don’t need to worry too much about this as you can pretty much always walk in to Atlas given that the place is regularly not far from empty, and even in high season, it’s almost never full.
And that’s why we’ve given this club a low score in this category. Atlas has been trying to trick people into booking by “reserving” whole sections online as though they are for VIP guests, when, in fact, they’re just empty.
It might sell seats, but it’s just not ethical. And it suckers in people looking for a social day out that they may not be able to have because it’s not remotely full inside.
Ambience and Atmosphere
If Atlas were full, we could imagine it would be a lot of fun. However, it’s almost never full nowadays, the club has gone through an endless series of embarrassing gaffes, and its reputation for service and high quality has run aground on a litany of bad reviews.
And because Atlas is a very big beach club, being sort of full won’t cut it; it feels empty in this beach club most of the time, and that’s just not the vibe we want.
The music’s fine, the entertainment is fine, and they’re clearly trying for a good time, but good times take other guests, and all too often, there aren’t any in Atlas.
One thing the club really struggles with is whether it’s an upmarket location or not. Selling Indomie noodles (which cost less than 50 cents in any minimart in the country) and Bintang t-shirts screams “value tourists”.
But selling the world’s most expensive nasi goreng (it’s a rice dish; what makes it expensive is the large steak they throw on top) suggests “big spenders”. You can’t really have both, and in Atlas’ case, they don’t have either right now.
Location And Accessibility
You can’t fault the location for Atlas’s woes, either. This part of Canggu is one of the most popular areas on the island.
The club next door, FINNS Beach Club, is the world’s best beach club, and it’s always packed out.
The beach is nice. The sunsets are great. It’s easy to get to from any of the other tourist areas on the island.
And while this club does entail a long walk from the front door, it’s nowhere near as long a walk as it is in Potato Head.
Aesthetic And Design
We think Atlas’s big mistake was trying to stake out the “world’s biggest beach club”. It means stretching the beach club all the way down the shoreline, and to ensure they didn’t end up with way too much capacity, that meant the beach club occupies a fairly narrow band of the total land that this club covers.
This leaves the different seating areas in this beach club very spread out from each other, and it only adds to the feeling that the club is empty when a seating area near you isn’t very busy, even if the rest of the club is heaving.
The club has recently remodelled its striking, if peculiarly out of place, frontage, and it feels a little corporate in its design now, too.
It’s not terrible, you will get some nice Instagram snaps, but it’s not memorable either.
Staff Friendliness and Professionalism (Service Standard)
The staff at Atlas are usually very friendly and professional, but the trouble is that there just aren’t enough of them.
This is the only beach club that some of our reviewers have ever got lost inside and been unable to get directions to where they were supposed to be.
It’s also the only place in Bali that we’ve ever been told to fetch our own drinks because the waiters don’t deliver the drinks that are included in the heavy entrance fee that Atlas charges.
Service is one of the easiest ways for a beach club to differentiate itself from the pack, and we can’t fathom how you can run a service business in Bali with this level of corporate indifference, as it’s clearly a management issue, not an issue with the individual staff members.
Service Speed and Efficiency
As you might expect, if you don’t have a huge number of staff on hand, you’re going to run into problems getting people served on time.
While some of our reviewers had no issues with the speed and efficiency of service in Atlas, several found themselves waiting unacceptably long for a drink or food.
One even witnessed a customer walk out and leave the bulk of their minimum spend behind in frustration at the total lack of service.
We don’t see how Atlas is going to get more customers when it treats its existing customers like this.
Food Quality and Variety
There was a time, not so long ago, that Atlas was clearly aiming to be a foodie’s go-to spot in Canggu. They had a lovely food court and the world’s most expensive nasi goreng.
Now, they have Indomie noodles, their menu on the Grab delivery app and a collection of dishes that can be very good or very bad depending on the day.
We find their food promotions to be pretty baffling, too, with many of their “offers’ blending into each other for similarity.
Bring back the good old days. If you’re lucky, you will get a tasty meal at Atlas, but you might not, now.
Beverage Selection and Creativity
They have a good array of beverages available on the menu in Atlas, and we certainly don’t think that you’re going to get bored with the drinks selection on any given visit.
However, the presentation can be amazing or it can be a little sloppy, another indication of the staffing troubles, perhaps. The welcome drink that is one glass and a bunch of straws is a great example of this.
There is also the concerning detail that a customer witnessed Atlas refilling branded spirits bottles from non-branded containers. They posted a video of this online.
The club says that this is an eco-friendly initiative, but it’s not one that’s being mirrored in other beach clubs, and we would expect it to be if the drinks’ suppliers were on board with it.
Cleanliness and Hygiene
Atlas used to be sparkling clean, but the reduced staffing numbers seem to have had an impact on the hygiene in this club, too.
While the pools are usually clear, several customers have left reviews complaining that they can also get pretty filthy, and they have left photographs to evidence this.
We found that many of the furniture items didn’t look in a good state of repair (some were straight up rusty), and that some of the towels had stains on them.
The bathrooms appeared clean, though as did the changing and showering area.
Comfort of Seating and Lounging Areas
Much of the furniture in this beach club looks like it’s been in service for too long, and there are real concerns about the quality of the coverings.
It’s also not quite as comfortable as it ought to be if it were better maintained. You won’t be miserable on a daybed here, far from it, but it won’t feel as luxurious as it should, particularly given the minimum spend requirements in this beach club.
We also weren’t impressed with the fact that some beds can’t attach an umbrella for sunshade.
Music and Entertainment
One area where we feel that Atlas is still punching its weight in is entertainment. They have some very good daily performances, and their dancers are fabulous.
However, that empty feeling in this club also takes some of the energy away from these ultra-professional displays.
It’s a touch pathetic when you have a stage full of performers playing to three occupied seats.
This club does have occasional visiting acts too, and they tend to be big brand names either locally or internationally. However, not every event offers value for money with high ticket prices and sometimes quite short performances.
Seasonality
This is Bali, baby! There’s almost no seasonality here. The island’s location in the tropics sees a wet season and a dry season.
But the wet season is not weeks of torrential rain, rather the occasional shower every other day in the wettest part of the year. It’s otherwise hot and sunny.
The dry season is slightly cooler than the wet season and has a little less rain, but it’s also hot and sunny.
Pricing and Value for Money
The value you get from a trip to Atlas at the moment very much depends on the day you go, the staff you deal with and what, exactly, you order from the menu.
While you probably can’t go wrong with cans of Bintang Beers and Indomie, it’s not really the fare of beach clubs; most people drink and eat this stuff outside the minimart at 2 a.m. here.
The cocktails and more expensive food options are a little hit and miss, and the minimum spend here is high for the overall quality of experience.
Beach Access and Quality
We love Berawa Beach. Sure, it’s black sand which isn’t everyone’s favourite, but it’s soft sand, the view out over the ocean is great and when you get to the sunset? It’s amazing.
Black sand traps water and allows the lights in the sky to reflect on the beach, which doesn’t happen on white sand beaches.
You can also get onto the beach from inside the club, but you must enter the club for the first time from the road, not the beach.
Sustainability Practices
Atlas talks a good game when it comes to sustainability, and there’s no doubt they have undertaken some initiatives in this area.
But they don’t have a concrete set of commitments on their website, and they don’t do any sustainability reporting. It’s a start, but there’s a lot of room for improvement here.
Exclusive Perks for Guests
If you agree to pay the entrance fee, you get the use of a towel. With a minimum spend, you also get a seat (there are some free seats in the bar area, but it is very much removed from the rest of the beach club), a discount in the onsite store, a shared drink and a few other things.
That’s about it, and it’s very much a standard for beach clubs in Bali.
Safety and Security
You will be searched briefly at the door of Atlas, which is a good thing for security. You will also be able to see enough security officers in the venue to both discourage and deal with trouble if it should arise.
However, our experiences saw some of our team wandering around the venue lost and out of line of sight of any Atlas staff, and that’s a huge potential security problem.
Event Hosting Capabilities
Atlas can host events, and they do have a dedicated event hosting team. But given the club’s obvious issues at the moment, we’d be reluctant to entrust them with an event.
What happens to your deposit if they should close their doors? Do you want your guests to gamble on good service on the day? And so on.
Consistency of Experience
There’s almost no consistency in the experience at Atlas, sadly. You can still have a great time at this beach club if you get lucky on the day you visit.
But you can also have a lonely, boring time, frustrated at the absence of staff and service.
We would congratulate Atlas on its efforts to reinvent itself, but it just keeps throwing things at the wall, hoping they will stick. The club never sticks to anything for long enough to develop any kind of strong sense of brand identity or customer loyalty.
Additional Amenities and Facilities
Atlas has pretty much everything that you need to have a day out at a beach club and if you need something else, you can almost always find it within a short walk of this beach club or a short drive at most.
Summary
We found ourselves wondering if Atlas Beach Club had given up when we visited for this review process. The club is often nearly empty.
Instead of focusing on getting people through the door, they’ve inexplicably launched a new bikini club to compete with it (the bikini club has no beach view or access).
The food, drink, service and hygiene standards have all gone downhill in the last year or so, and the club seems to have no clear sense of direction.
The entertainment remains good, but overall, we feel that there are many better beach clubs in Bali, and if we found ourselves outside Atlas, we’d walk the extra 200 yards down the street and go to FINNS instead at the moment.
FAQs
Can You Go Swimming At Atlas Beach Club?
Yes, you can swim in both the Atlas Beach Club and the Atlas Bikini Club. The beach club has two pools, a central large feature pool and a child-friendly pool and the bikini club offers an additional pool.
The bikini club still hasn’t officially opened as we go to press, but it seems likely that if you want to go from the beach club to the bikini club that you may need to pay more than one entrance fee and agree to more than one minimum spend.
There is no swimming in the nightclub, though, there’s no pool and no Ibiza-style all-night foam parties, either.
What Is There To Do At Atlas Beach Club?
You can eat, drink, swim, lounge by the pool, read a book, talk to friends, enjoy the entertainment, and dance in the Atlas Beach Club.
Atlas is probably Bali’s largest beach club, and it has a good range of facilities; you’re unlikely to be bored with the place in a fleeting visit.
Is Atlas Beach Club A Child-Friendly Venue?
Yes, Atlas Beach Club is a child-friendly venue. Children are welcome throughout the venue, and there are dedicated kids’ areas with a special pool for children.
They have a children’s menu which offers some local and international fare in more reasonable portions for little ones.
The beach club even has occasional organised activities for children to enjoy, so that parents can get a quick break during the course of the day.
Who Is The Owner Of Atlas Beach Club?
Atlas is owned by the Holywings Group. This is a consortium of Indonesian private investors, and the majority of the investors in this group are based in Jakarta, though not all of them.
Final Thoughts On The Review Of Atlas Beach Club
Atlas Beach Club launched in a blaze of glory, but the club has struggled to live up to expectations.
We can’t fathom the lack of direction from management, and we find it frustrating to deal with a place where service is going downhill, and there are very clear questions over the ethics of their booking practices and bottle refilling efforts.
Our review team weren’t impressed with the new Indomie menu, either. You go to a beach club to enjoy luxuries, not to eat 50-cent meals with a $10 price tag.
We’d really like to see Atlas step up a gear and live up to the promise it had when it was a newcomer in Bali, because at the moment, it feels very much past its glory days.
