Where are the top unique bars around the world hiding?

These are five of them. Places where the drink is almost beside the point.

1. SUBSIX: Niyama Private Islands, Maldives

Most beach bars sit on the sand. SUBSIX sits six metres beneath it!
The world’s first underwater nightclub is built 500 metres offshore from Niyama Private Islands, reached by speedboat skimming out over the reef before guests descend a three-tier staircase into a room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, a clam-shaped bar, and coral-toned chandeliers glowing overhead. By day it runs as a restaurant, with the reef’s actual marine life drifting past the windows mid-meal.

On Friday and Saturday nights it flips into a full nightclub: DJs, a dance floor, cocktails, six metres below the waves with nothing but glass between the crowd and the fish outside.

It opened in 2012 as the world’s first venue of its kind, and more than a decade on, there still isn’t another bar quite like it anywhere on earth.

2. Icebar by ICEHOTEL: Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

This bar doesn’t survive the season.
Built fresh every winter from blocks of ice cut straight from the nearby Torne River, the walls, the furniture, the bar itself and even the glasses are carved anew each year by visiting artists, then left to melt back into the river by spring.
Step inside and the temperature sits around -5°C year-round, robes and gloves provided at the door.

The ice glasses have their own origin story: in 1995, the hotel’s founders got tired of drinking whisky from plastic cups in the Arctic cold, carved glasses out of ice instead.
Since 2016, ICEHOTEL 365 has kept a version running year-round, so you no longer need to time a trip to winter to drink from a glass that’s actively melting in your hand.

3. Cova d'en Xoroi: Cala en Porter, Menorca, Spain

Halfway down a 30-metre cliff on Menorca's south coast, a natural sea cave opens onto a series of terraces carved into the rock face, each one stacked higher than the last with nothing but open water in front of you.
It's named after Xoroi, a Turkish pirate said to have hidden out here for years, undiscovered until a rare Menorcan snowfall gave away his footprints leading straight into the cave. Cornered on the terrace, he supposedly jumped into the sea rather than get caught.

By day it runs as a bar, purely for the view: sunset from these terraces is one of the best seats in the Mediterranean, and there's no better spot to watch the sun drop into the water.
Once it's down, the same cave turns into a nightclub, DJs and live music echoing off rock walls a few hundred years older than the drinks list.

4. Please Don’t Tell (PDT): New York City, USA

From the street, PDT doesn’t exist. The only way in is through Crif Dogs, a hot dog shop in the East Village, and the only way from Crif Dogs into the bar is an old wooden phone booth against the back wall. Pick up the receiver, and if there’s a table, the back panel swings open into one of the most influential cocktail bars of the last twenty years.

Opened in 2007 by Jim Meehan, Brian Shebairo and Chris Antista, PDT is widely credited with starting the modern speakeasy revival, proof that a fake phone booth and a strict no-name-on-the-window policy could outlast almost every flashier bar that opened the same year.
It won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program in 2012, and the phone booth is still the only sign it’s there.

5. At.mosphere: Burj Khalifa, Dubai

At.mosphere holds the Guinness World Record for highest restaurant from ground level, and the attached lounge shares the same floor: level 122 of the Burj Khalifa, 442 metres up.
Guests enter through the Armani Hotel lobby and take a dedicated elevator straight to the top, arriving two floors below the public observation deck with a view that makes that deck look like an afterthought.

There’s no rope line, no rooftop bar in another city that comes close to the elevation. This is simply the highest place on the planet to order a drink and mean it literally. Order right as the sun drops and Dubai’s skyline turns gold beneath you, then try to explain to anyone back home why every other rooftop bar now feels a little low.

Before You Go: Pack Smart With Your EHG Member Rewards

A night out like any of these still means an outfit, a flight, and getting to and from the airport, and EHG members don’t pay full price for any of it. Through the EHG member rewards library, members access exclusive discounts across 12,000+ retail partners, covering everything from travel essentials and clothing to everyday groceries and fuel.
With up to 80% off online shopping, discounts via Coles and Woolworths, and 40% off dining, the average EHG family saves around $5,500 a year, a meaningful head start on the next trip.

These Are Exactly the Trips Exclusive Holiday Getaways Was Built For

Most people will never sip a drink at any of these bars, not because they’re unreachable, but because getting there takes more than a search engine and a credit card. We built Exclusive Holiday Getaways because we believed Australians deserved a membership that did three things at once: helped them win extraordinary holidays, saved them real money every day, and gave back to the causes that matter most to them.

Every week, EHG members go in the draw to win luxury holidays (the kind of trips on this list) with prizes worth up to $35,000, and quarterly mega-prizes reaching $100,000. And 20% of every membership fee goes directly to your chosen charity, from Vision Australia and Lifeline to Make-A-Wish and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

See all our charity partners here.

Join EHG: access thousands of everyday savings, support a charity you care about, and go in the weekly draw to win a luxury holiday. The best nights don’t wait either.

See this week’s prize and enter the draw