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Boosting Per Caps at Waterparks

by Keith Miller

Instead of abstract pie-in-the-sky advice on how to increase income at their parks, attendees at the “Revenue-Generating Ideas” session for waterparks Monday morning were privy to some specific real-world success stories from the seminar speakers. Scott Carothers, general manager at Wild Island Family Adventure Park, talked about how parks can get the most out of cabana rentals by offering different-sized cabanas at varying prices makes them attractive to a greater number of groups. He also advised featuring very large cabanas because they attract mini-group business like birthday parties.

Andy Maurek, general manager of Hyland Hills Water World, suggested offering an early-entry option to guests for a fee because guests like to get into the park before it opens and grab the best spots to set up. He also discussed his park’s “Tube Valet” program, where guests pay an extra fee not to have to carry their own inner tubes through the long queues.

George Rohman, operations manager at Morey’s Piers, talked about his park’s premium breakfast excursion on the park’s Ferris wheel gondolas. Guests pay from $40 to $85 per person for an hour-long upscale breakfast served on the ride. He said it’s a great experience that has generated much positive media coverage, but cautions that it’s labor intensive, weather sensitive, and has limited capacity.

Other ideas included a suggestion by Chris Perry, general manager of Wild Wadi Waterpark, that parks do all restaurant grilling outdoors for visual and aromatic benefits; and Mike Bengtson, general manager of Splish Splash waterpark, said that after consulting an experienced games operator, the park’s gaming per caps increased from 14 cents to 40 cents on the same games.

Authentic Operations

by Keith Miller

When Michael Ahlerup became general manager of Astrid Lindgrens World in Sweden a few years ago, one of the first things he did was show photos to the park’s owners of some beautifully themed signs at another park in Europe, then compared them to Astrid Lindgrens World’s more mundane signs. After suggesting the signs be improved, he received a shocking response: “In our park, a sign is suppose to be a sign, not an experience.”

Ahlerup said the lesson was that their attraction should be true to the theme and heritage of Astrid Lindgrens—the high-tech 3D theme park world isn’t what they’re about. With this in mind, the park realized that it sold loads of branded products, yet no such products exist in the books of famous Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. The facility proceeded to eliminate branded food items, but the move didn’t generate more positive feedback results from guests.

So in 2009, the park hired a famous Swedish chef as a consultant, then converted all of the food offerings to products that are locally grown in order to remain true to the setting of Lindgren’s books. This required some extraordinary steps, like buying a $15,000 meat slicer for a local pork producer who couldn’t keep up the park’s demand because he sliced all of his pork by hand.

But the results have been dramatic. Guest feedback has been extremely positive, both in the popularity of the restaurant menus and the perception of value for money spent. This was reflected in dramatic increases in revenue and per-cap sales from 2009 to 2010. Ahlerup said the move has also led to extraordinarily positive media coverage for the park.