Sauna club

What is a sauna club?

A sauna club is, in the Netherlands, an erotic venue with a wellness core, a sauna, a pool, and playrooms, where couples and singles meet naked and can have consensual sex on the spot. It is a form of sex club, close to the couples club. Watch out for the false friend: in Germany a sauna club is a brothel.

What a sauna club looks like in practice

An evening in a sauna club looks like wellness from the outside and differs inside on one point: here it may turn erotic, if everyone wants it.

Take a common picture. You come in as a couple or as a single, pay entrance, undress, and get a towel. After that it is at first just a sauna: warming up, the pool, a hammam, a drink and a chat. The Dutch Wikipedia notes about the closely related couples club that many clubs have a pool and a sauna and are very strict on hygiene and conduct. Only once the click is there and both want it does it move to the playrooms. A no is respected, and anyone who does not keep to the house rules is back outside just as quickly.

What sets a sauna club apart from an ordinary couples club is above all the wellness setting: the sauna is central instead of the bar or the dance floor.

Where the confusion comes from

The word sauna club means something different on each side of the border, and that leads to misunderstandings.

In the Netherlands an erotic sauna club falls under the sex club: a venue where sexual acts are an important part. That makes it legally a sex business, for which the municipality, according to for instance the municipality of Hattem, requires an operating permit, just as for a brothel or couples club. The sex between guests is unpaid.

In Germany it is different. There a Saunaclub, often also called an FKK-Club, is according to the German Wikipedia a brothel, where the sauna rooms are used for paid contact between sex workers and clients. The confusion comes from the label FKK, short for Freikörperkultur, originally just nude recreation, which the German sex industry later took over.

Why people go to a sauna club

The draw is in the relaxed atmosphere. Heat, water, and nakedness take out the tension that an ordinary club or bar builds up instead. For many people, naked in a sauna feels less loaded than dressed at a bar, and that lowers the threshold to make contact.

For a couple it is a way to discover together what it is like to have others there, in a setting with clear rules. For a single it is a place to take part within those rules. And because everything runs on house rules and consent, the social code there is stricter than outsiders think.

The downside belongs with it. A sauna club is a public erotic place, not a wellness outing: it is not for everyone, and the first time can be overwhelming. Anyone looking only for relaxation without the erotic side is better off at an ordinary sauna. And unlike what the name sometimes suggests, in the Netherlands it is not a brothel; anyone looking for that is at the wrong address.

What a sauna club is not

“Every sauna is a little erotic.” No. An ordinary wellness sauna or mixed sauna is non-sexual; only an explicitly erotic sauna club is a sex venue. The difference is in the intent and the permit, not in the temperature.

“A sauna club is just a brothel.” In the Netherlands, no. There it is a swinger or erotic sauna where the sex between guests is voluntary and unpaid. The brothel meaning is the German sense of the word, not the Dutch one.

“Naked means sexual.” Also no. Naturism, or FKK, is naked but precisely not erotic. In a sauna club the nakedness is erotically charged. Same bare skin, different frame.

What I see myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. The sauna club comes up with me as an in-between step: a woman or a couple who is curious, but still finds the leap to a full club too big.

The biggest fear is almost never the sex itself. It is the gaze of strangers, the idea that you have to do something straight away. Then I help take it apart: being naked is not the same as doing something, and watching is not the same as taking part. For anyone who first wants to feel what it is like to have someone there together, at a pace you set, a calm first step is often nicer than the bustle of a club evening.

More on the sauna club

On this site the broader category is at sex club, the nearest relative at couples club, and the club that is about partner swapping at swingers club. What doing it together with others involves is at swinging.

Beyond this site, the Dutch Wikipedia on the couples club and the one on the sex club lay out the Dutch context, while the German Wikipedia shows how differently the same word works out across the border.

Where this fits on this site

If you are curious about the atmosphere of a sauna club, but a public evening still feels too big, a calm first step can help. I do not offer a sauna club, but I do offer a meeting at your pace where you taste what it is like to have someone there. The page for couples sets out how an appointment like that is prepared.

Sources

• Parenclub. Wikipedia. Gives that a couples club is a venue where couples meet and can carry out sexual acts, that many clubs have a pool and sauna and are very strict on hygiene and conduct, and that paid sex there is a rare exception.
• Seksclub. Wikipedia. Gives that a sex club is a venue with a fixed premises where carrying out sexual acts is an important part, with the couples club as one of the named subtypes alongside brothel, gay sauna, and nightclub.
• Kontaktsauna. Wikipedia (German). Gives that a Kontaktsauna, often also called a Saunaclub or FKK-Club, is in Germany a brothel business where the sauna rooms are used for paid sexual contact between sex workers and clients.
• Seksbedrijf exploitatievergunning. Municipality of Hattem. Gives that a sex business, such as a brothel, escort business, or couples club, needs an operating permit from the municipality in the Netherlands.

Related terms

• Sex club. The overarching category the sauna club is a sauna variant of.
• Couples club. The nearest relative, of which the sauna club is in fact a wellness version.
• Swingers club. The club that is about partner swapping, often overlapping with the swingers sauna.
• Swinging. Having sex as a couple with others, which is what happens at a sauna club.
• Naturism. Recreating naked with no sexual intent, exactly the frame that a sauna club is not.