Pub Crawls hosted a self-guided Myrtle Beach Halloween Bar Crawl on Oct. 26, with intentions of involving locals and tourists, but the company didn’t live up to expectations.
The night began with check-in at Sharkey’s Oceanfront Resort from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Upon entry, Pub Crawls staff gave each crawler a goodie bag and a wristband with a QR code. The code gave attendees access to a digital map of the participating bars and their respective discounted menus.
Along with Sharkey’s Oceanfront Resort, participating bars included Art Burger Sushi Bar, Legend’s Sports Pub & Grille, Foster’s Cafe & Bar, Dirty Don’s Oyster Bar and 8th Ave. Tiki Bar & Grill.
The wristband gave “free” entry to these bars. However, most of them didn’t have an entry fee to begin with.
Many of the bars only had a couple discounts, and 8th Ave Tiki Bar & Grill didn’t show any specials for crawlers on the digital menu.
Other information about the event on pubcrawls.com didn’t match what happened. For example, the website said there was going to be a $2,000 prize value social media costume contest, and attendees could enter the contest by following Pub Crawls on Instagram and by tagging them in a photo of their costume.
Although some crawlers from other cities posted their costumes on Instagram, no information about the contest was given at check-in, no Pub Crawls photographers or videographers were in attendance and no afterparty was mentioned at check-in like the website stated.
Furthermore, the bars weren’t decorated for the event and seemed to have not been given adequate information about it.
Pub Crawls is a nationwide company and claims to host themed drinking events in various cities. However, their Instagram page, @pubcrawlers is full of negative comments about people feeling “scammed” with their city’s crawl.
Although the company has over 400,000 followers, negative comments come with almost every recent post. Some comments urged others to not buy from them and to report the Pub Crawls account.
Despite the letdown for many, the Myrtle Beach community still got the chance to interact with each other and discover bars in the area.
Brittany Conley, vice president of partner relations for Pub Crawls, said the local community is a major part of the event as it’s a way to connect with others and discover new bars.
“You have the opportunity to kind of just hang out with people that you haven’t met before,” Conley said. “It’s a great way to support local businesses as well.”
Pub Crawls has hosted themed drinking events since 2008. Despite the negative comments online, Conley said they partner with different companies to plan events and post articles to their website.
“Even companies that already do bar crawls we’ll partner with them too; a lot of organizations, especially charity stuff like pride organizations and things of that nature,” she said. “So, we just try to get really involved in the community and bring revenue to those local businesses.”
