On June 1st, 2015 I boarded my Ryanair flight to Malaga airport. I was full of anticipation for the summer ahead, living and working in TOWIE’s favourite party location, Marbella.
My best friend and I had spent weeks planning our summer excursion, and had found jobs working as promo girls on the Puerto Banus strip for a chain of clubs.
Our first day was a medley of unpacking and meeting the other promoters we were working with. There were people from all parts of Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland.
Puerto Banus was beautiful by day, with luxurious designer shops such as Chanel and BCBG facing out towards the open port filled with yachts owned by the mega rich. Palm trees lined the streets which were filled with designer clad patrons and tourists.
At night the port became a playground for the rich, with nightclubs serving €5,000 bottles of Cristal, Belvedere vodka and Patrón tequila until 7am.
The strip offered more affordable deals, which my team and I were selling. These ranged from two drinks and two shots for €10 to unlimited drinks for €15.
While we might have been selling peasant drink prices compared to the millionaires clubs and bars, it did not mean we were missing out on the Marbella lifestyle. The work schedule was tough, eight hour shifts with no breaks for six days a week, working purely on commission. However, once we had settled in, the benefits of our jobs made it all worthwhile.
We had access to boat parties, SISU Boutique Hotel’s pool parties and Ocean Beach Club for free. We were taken care of in one of Marbella’s best nightclubs, TIBU, which gave us premium tables and huge bottles of vodka worth thousands of euro every single night. Once the clubs closed at 7am it was onto the beach for a morning swim before crawling back to the apartment.
The work could be draining, and on a slow night you could genuinely have made no money at all. There were problems with customers making lewd comments to promo girls and I often saw people passed out from drinking on the party strip.
While I won’t exactly remember every detail of the crazy champagne spray parties, the main thing I took away from my time in Marbella were the friends I made for life. As cheesy as it sounds, it was ingrained in us from day one that we were not just a team but a family, and I now speak to my Marbella family as much as my real family back home.
Sarah Magliocco
Image Credit: Hayley Perring
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