Complete Guide to Pool Venue Rentals
When the weather warms up and you've got a special occasion to mark, there's no better way to celebrate than with a pool party. Whether it's a kid's birthday party or a suave and sophisticated cocktail party by the sparkling water's edge, a swimming pool setting offers a fun and memorable setting for a variety of special events.
And no matter whether you're in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami Beach, or destinations all around the country, it's easy to find pool party venues on the Giggster app. From humble backyard pools to luxurious resort-style oases, there are venues to suit any need or budget. Many pool venues are also available to rent for film and photo shoots, so the possibilities for your pool setting are just about endless.
Incredible Pool Venues Curated by Giggster
Make your next pool party one to remember by hosting it at a truly unique and memorable pool area. You're sure to find what you're looking for among Giggster's curated collection of pool party venues.
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What kid doesn't love attending pool parties? When you get to splash around, cool off, play fun games like Marco Polo with all your friends—with the occasional break for a sugar hit, of course—the party just flies by.
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Celebrate your birthday party by the pool with a relaxed gathering of family and friends. With cocktails and canapes for the adults and plenty of underwater fun and games for the kids, you're all set for a memorable birthday bash.
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Pool parties are sometimes loud and raucous affairs, but they don't have to be. With private cabanas, a warming fire pit, twinkling lights, and the night sky above, the stage is set for a cozy and intimate celebration by the pool.
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Hosting a music video shoot and looking for a setting that hints at endless summer time fun? A big, sparkling, luxurious pool fits the bill perfectly.
Amazing Pool Venues Starting at Just $20 USD/hour
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Exceptional Variety & Quality: From Las Vegas to Tampa, you'll find wonderful pool party venues right across the country. And with 5614 special spots to choose from on the Giggster app, it's easy to plan birthday parties and other private events to remember.
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Hassle-Free Booking: Booking pool party venues on Giggster is easier than doing the doggy paddle. Use the handy search filters to narrow down the results, check prices and venue info upfront, and then contact the host directly if you need more details.
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24-Hour Free Cancellation Policy: Organizing a party can be a logistical nightmare and things don't always go as planned. That's why we offer free cancellations within 24 hours of confirming your booking, provided that your booking is made at least 48 hours prior to the event.
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Platform Protections: If you want some extra peace of mind when booking a pool party location, add optional damage, liability, and cancellation protection to cover yourself against the unexpected.
Top Events for Pool Venues
A pool is a versatile setting for quite a surprising range of events, from birthday parties to corporate cocktail soirees. Here are just some of the special occasions that are well suited to pool party venues.
Birthday Party – Three Cheers! Pool birthday parties are great fun, no matter how old you are. And if you find a property with a heated pool, you've got a suitable setting for birthday parties all year round.
Cocktail Party – Chic and Sophisticated. A glimmering resort-style pool area with lush greenery, private cabanas, and comfy lounge seating is perfect for delicious cocktails. Resort Style Backyard w/Heated Pool (add-on) & Water Slide offers a wonderful spot to sip cocktails and chat by the pool.
Graduation Party – Something to Celebrate. School's out and it's time to make a splash to celebrate finishing your studies. How better to do so than sit back, relax, and enjoy a pool party with your besties.
Family Reunion – Family Fun. A family get-together is always a special day, so treat your loved ones to a summertime swim and gathering when you re-connect around a spectacular pool.
Baby Shower – Luxurious Experience. The mom-to-be doesn't want a big night out, so treat her to a chilled shower with lots of gifts, some delicious food, and a relaxing poolside setting.
Top Features to Look for in a Pool Venue
How can you find pool party venues that offer everything you need for your birthday party or special event. Be sure to keep an eye out for the following features.
Book the best pool. The right pool party venues have pools that meet your needs. You might want the pool merely for its visual impact and the ambiance it helps create, or you might want it to be suitable for kids of all ages to take to the water. The addition of a spa can also be a big bonus depending on your needs.
Find the right price. Your budget should be your number-one consideration when planning your next pool party, so make sure you only consider pool party venues that you can comfortably afford to rent.
Search for a helpful host. A great host will respond quickly to your queries, accommodate special requests, and be happy to work with you to create the type of pool party you've been dreaming of.
Advantages of Renting a Pool Venue
There are lots of great reasons why you and your guests will love celebrating by the pool, but there are also a few factors that may cause you to consider other options.
Advantages
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From humble to jaw-droppingly luxurious, pool party venues come in all sizes and styles.
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Pool party venues are suited to a wonderfully diverse range of social and corporate events—not to mention film shoots and other creative projects.
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When the heat of summer arrives, particularly in hotter areas of the country, a poolside setting provides a relaxed location for your party.
Disadvantages
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Safety is always a concern if you're planning a child's birthday party and some guests can't swim.
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The most popular pool party venues book out months in advance, so you'll need to be organized to be sure of securing a space.
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The best pools also tend to be quite expensive, so you might exceed your budget.
How to Plan a Pool Event
Planning a pool party involves juggling many tasks at once, so here are the key steps you need to follow to plan a fun celebration.
Choose an Experience – Decide on what sort of experience you want guests to enjoy at your party—something fun and relaxed or a little more formal and sophisticated. Then you can put together a guest list and get the invitations out straight away.
Set a Spending Limit – Calculate how much you can reasonably afford to spend on your pool party, and take care not to overspend.
Choose a Pool Party Location – Compare a variety of pool party venues to find the perfect space for your party. Whatever you want in a pool area—elegant decor, private cabanas, a heated pool, a fire pit, a luxurious house, sunset views, a swim-up bar or anything else—shop around to find your dream birthday party space.
Organize Food, Drinks, and Entertainment – Work with a caterer and a local bartending service to ensure that your guests will be well fed and refreshed at your party. And if you need to hire or book any entertainment, do that now.
Saving Money on a Pool Event
Do your bank balance a favor and remember the following tips to help save money on your next pool party.
Make a detailed budget.
Break down your list of expected birthday party expenses into individual categories—this should help give you a much more accurate idea of how much your celebration will cost.
Compare a wide range of options.
Don't just choose the first halfway suitable location you find; compare pool party venues to find a space that meets your budget as well as your needs. Locations on the Giggster app start from as little as $20 USD/hour.
Protect yourself against the unexpected.
Leave some of your total budget aside as an emergency fund to cover unexpected costs that arise during the planning process.
Plan Your Pool Event with Giggster
From Las Vegas and San Diego to New York and Boston, there are great pool party venues just waiting to be enjoyed right across the country. Find pool venues on the Giggster app now, book your perfect place, and start planning a celebration to remember.
Viktor Gladkov // Shutterstock
Written by: Ali Hickerson
5 types of pools to inspire your next staycation
Staring at the sky as you float. The sounds of the world's kinetic energy subdued. When submerged beneath the water's glassy surface, the thump of your heartbeat transforms into your own private soundtrack.
Lou Stoppard, curator, broadcaster, and author of the photo book, "Pools: Lounging, Diving, Floating, Dreaming: Picturing Life at the Swimming Pool" encapsulates the experience in an interview with British clothing brand Orlebar Brown: "My favourite pool memories are more about a feeling than a specific place or pool. It's that feeling you get when you are underwater, swimming, and all worries dissipate. It's a wonderful, liberating, meditative feeling. Of course, sometimes I swim to socialise, but mostly I swim to be truly alone."
Swimming can feel transformative—and studies prove it is. Swimming in pools is a more accessible activity for many as it is easier on the joints for older people or those dealing with injuries.
Images of pools have become chiseled into the cultural consciousness, too: the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind" album, with a baby floating toward a dollar bill; the kaleidoscopic images of synchronized swimmers in a circle, kicking in unison, in Busby Berkeley's golden oldie movies; the lifeguard scene in "The Sandlot," to name a few.
But the earliest known "pools," or human-made public baths, go back to 2500 BCE in the Indus Valley. Anthropologists say "The Great Bath" was likely used as a temple. Modern-day pools often represent time with family and friends, offer health and wellness, and can help you tap into the world of luxury.
Today, you can rent a private pool in your neighborhood through an app, search for the nearest public one online, or get a full-on luxury treatment by venturing further. Giggster searched industry publications and media articles to find some of the best pool experiences that might just encourage you to dive into some R&R.
Cave pools (aka cenotes)
Cave pools offer a way to stay cool while feeling a sense of seclusion. They're modeled from naturally occurring "cenotes," which dot the landscape in Cancun, Tulum, Playa del Carmen, and Yucatán in Mexico. Cavernous cenotes are usually composed of rainwater and filtered by the earth above. In them, you might float below stalactites or even spy bats grasping onto the limestone.
Artificial cave pools can include a "grotto" feature, which may consist of a waterfall that overlays a small cave, emulating the real-deal underground swimming sites. In 1973, Playboy's publisher and editor Hugh Hefner financed a large, cave-like grotto and swimming pool that would become the backdrop for risqué photo shoots and launched the lagoon-style pool into 1970s culture.
Infinity pool
That seemingly endless horizon line of water you see could be a mirage—or if you're on Instagram, it's probably an infinity pool. Known for a pool edge that looks like it vanishes into the landscape, infinity pools spool over a wall that usually overlooks cityscapes and are a calling card for luxury hotels, resorts, and some estates.
In the 1950s, architect John Lautner, an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the first infinity pool in Los Angeles. Decades later, the pool is still iconic.
If you really want to live on the edge, The Joule hotel's infinity pool in Dallas, Texas, juts out 8 feet beyond the edge of the 10th floor, with a Plexiglass front wall. In Ubud, Bali, travelers can have a similar swim, with a pool over a jungle at the Hanging Gardens Luxury Hotel and Spa.
However, the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore is the world's most famous infinity pool, sitting upon a cantilevered platform on top of the 57-story resort, curving around one side of the SkyPark. A visitor told The Outline that other visitors were "shameless" about getting the perfect photo, perhaps to justify the $450-a-night experience.
Communal bathhouses
Call it what you will: banya, onsen, sauna, hammam, mikveh, jjimjilbang, gymnasium, spa—around the world, most cultures have a form of bathhouse.
Communal bathhouses have been an important part of religion, wellness, and culture for centuries, but it took longer to pick up in popularity in the U.S., only gaining speed in the Gilded Age. In 1891, the People's Baths helped cater to the 97% of tenement dwellers without access to bathtubs or water to bathe in. Initially, it was a strictly cleansing experience, but eventually, bathers learned to pay off attendants to lengthen their stay and allow for socializing.
Bathhouses now equate to a luxurious act of self-care and can be pricey, but they are found in many American cities and are in demand following the isolation of the pandemic.
If you want to venture out further for the experience, consider adding Budapest, aka the "City of Spas," to your bucket list. If a good photo is paramount, head to the thermal Gellért Baths designed in the Art Nouveau style. Closer to home, Colorado's Springs Resort & Spa overlooks the San Juan River, with water for its 23 soaking tubs coming from the world's deepest geothermal hot springs at around 1,002 feet.
Hot tubs
While bathhouses serve communities en masse, the first bath that integrated jet whirlpools with equal amounts of water and air entered the market in 1956 with the Roman by the company Jacuzzi. The design was amended from an earlier version that used their patented hydrotherapy pump to reduce rheumatoid arthritis. Jacuzzis soon became a household name, with Elvis and Marilyn Monroe both owning one. By 1970, the size of the units expanded to become self-contained family-sized spas that we still use today.
Installing a hot tub is cheaper than an average pool, doesn't involve permits, and can be used year-round, so it's no wonder the hot tub and spa industry is still growing.
Tourists looking for private hot tub experiences that overlook waterscapes can take their pick: soak in a private jacuzzi at Katikies Mykonos in Greece with a view of the Aegean Sea, relax at Fiji's Namale resort for adults only in a heart-shaped hot tub sitting at the mouth of the ocean, or gaze at the mountains and water from a private hot tub at Faro di Brucoli, across the Gulf of Catania in Sicily, Italy.
Plunge pools
Those who know and love Wim Hof, the Netherlander "Ice Man" who touts the mental and psychological benefits of cold plunges, may already be sold on the freezing-cold plunge pools that test endurance and force mindful breathing and meditation to withstand the experience.
For the extreme-temperature adverse, plunge pools can be any temperature. Some models even double as hot tubs. The pools are defined by their small sizes of varying depths between 3 and 7 feet, mimicking the deep basin swimming holes in nature at the bottom of waterfalls. Some Americans even call them "cocktail pools"—designed for just a dip. They're cheaper to buy and maintain, and their smaller footprint acts as an add-on to a backyard rather than taking it over as standard pools do.
In the world of water recreation, one might say plunge pools defined 2023. Better Homes & Gardens reported one design firm, Yardzen, saw a 15% increase in requests year-on-year.
If you'd prefer to test drive the plunge pool experience while on vacation, St Lucia's Ladera Resort, located in the Caribbean, offers adults-only luxury with private plunge pools sitting in a valley of the Piton Mountains, amid the rainforest and the sea. Another option, the Aqua Wellness Resort Tree House suites and villas in Nicaragua's Redonda Bay off the Pacific Ocean, boasts private plunge pools with views of the bay.
Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn.
