Grévin and Company:
A Collaborative Empire
Vive la
Resistance

By Kevin Moffett

When Parc Asterix opened in Paris in 1989, the French were taken aback. In France, according to Alex Gourveitch, vice president of corporate communications at Grévin and Company, people don’t expect to have fun just for fun’s sake. They need to learn something, too.

“While some people did go to small amusement parks for family outings, a large park seemed very overwhelming and strange,” he says. “The scale and mechanics of it were disarming, and even small things, like the concept of one admission price, where you pay at the gate, confused people.”
Management at Grévin and Company, the entertainment firm that owns and operates the park as well as several other leisure sites in Europe, was tasked to educate the public. Chief Executive Officer Olivier de Bosredon says that rather than injecting educational components into the park—a move that would have seemed false to him—he wanted the experience of the park to demonstrate to visitors that “if there is good quality entertainment, there is no shame in it.” He admits that he had some lessons to learn himself, mostly economic: issues of supply and demand, how to calibrate investment, how to bring in guests, and even which days to stay open and which days to be closed. Then, in 1992, Euro Disney opened its doors just a few miles away from Parc Asterix, posing a new challenge for de Bosredon and his colleagues.

“I traveled to California to ask the management at Knott’s Berry Farm how they survived so close to Disneyworld, and I was told to create a park that was unique, very unlike Disney in every way,” de Bosredon says. And with that advice, Parc Asterix, which is based on a famous French comic depicting the adventures of two Gauls during Roman times, persevered. “Our initial aim was just to launch Parc Asterix. We had no clear vision of other acquisitions at that early date,” says de Bosredon.

According to Gourveitch, the premise of the comic—and thus the park—is that the Roman Empire has invaded all of Europe except one Gallic village. “It’s about resisting homogenous culture, promoting a discussion of the place of France in the world,” he says. “We extended that philosophy to our eventual acquisition of other parks—that it’s a good idea to allow locals to save and promote their own culture.”

Parc Asterix now welcomes more than 2 million visitors a year, making sure that the village looks exactly as it does in the comic books—and that the comic book’s co-creator, Albert Uderzo, approves of it. Eighty professions are represented in the park, many of them housed in the quaint medieval city. They include blacksmiths, potters, gardeners, animal trainers, and stuntmen. The blacksmith has even created a signature object from a copper-bronze alloy: a Carnyx, a large, vertical Celtic war trumpet decorated with an animal’s head. The Carnyx is a symbol of the independent Celtic world that disappeared with Roman colonization—except at Parc Asterix.

Other unique touches at Parc Asterix include a 250-year-old olive tree, planted in the Greek city area; a ballet of free-flying birds of prey in the Middle Ages square (including a white-tailed eagle, a blue eagle, a buzzard, a falcon, a Lapland owl, and a condor named Anda); craftsmen—employing the same tools that were used in the Roman Era—cutting stones, designing stained glass, and sculpting wood for the construction of Notre Dame cathedral; the Cité Lacustre (Lakeside City), built with wood from the sport complexes at the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville; and a mountain climber who spends two hours checking the 1,100 meters of track on Parc Asterix’s Tonnerre de Zeus roller coaster.

Additionally, Parc Asterix offers a litany of live shows, including the Poseidon Theater’s Dolphin Show; The Mona Lisa Theft, featuring an acrobatic chase and a slew of special effects; The Stars of the Empire, featuring Crassus Matuvus’s best efforts to become emperor by presenting an impressive collection of magic, synchronized swimming, singing, and aerial performances; Ten Thousand Years of Magic at the Jetfix Theater, a display of optical illusions, half of which take place on stage and the other half on a movie screen; and Giggles Guaranteed at the Bard’s Theater, where characters from the comic books star in an episode from the career of the Bard Cacofonix.

Street performances in Parc Asterix are regular occurences as well, and might include the swashbuckling Three Musketeers, or Asterix and his pals clowning around.

And on sale in the popular park are all 31 popular Asterix comic books.

Indeed, by 1995, Grévin and Company had hit its stride, navigating the amusement park business with increasing confidence and finesse. And by the late 1990s, Asterix was doing well financially. Gourveitch says Grévin and Company’s thinking was twofold: that the purpose of a company is to grow, and that Parc Asterix had reached its capacity at more than 2 million guests per year. So taking over other parks that were doing well was the next logical step. Grévin and Company was not interested in rehabilitating failing parks, but instead wanted to help already-flourishing sites retain their healthy local presence.

“Grévin and Company is the opposite of a firm,” Gourveitch stresses. “We envision ourselves much like a theater company, bringing together different personalities. When we buy a park from someone, the former owner usually wants its ethos to remain the same. We honor that, and we honor cultural and geographical distinctions. We’re not aiming to turn our sites into world icons, as is perhaps the American model. We think regional parks and sites that cater to local families are very important.”

De Bosredon echoes that sentiment. “We saw opportunities in Europe to reinforce the culture of various sites. And we went for medium-sized parks that are more conducive to a local clientele.”

Grévin and Company’s first acquisition took place in September 1998, when it bought the Grand Aquarium Saint-Malo, also in France. In 2001, Grévin and Company crossed international borders for the first time, acquiring Dolfinarioum Harderwijk and Avonturenpark Hellendoorn in the Netherlands; in 2002, Fort Fun in Germany; and in 2003, Switzerland’s Aquaparc. Domestically, Grévin and Company purchased Grévin and France Miniature in 1999, Parc de Bagatelle in 2000, and Aquarium du Val de Loire and Mini-Chateaux in 2002.

“Bagatelle is a good example of our philosophy in action,” Gourveitch says. “It is located in northern France and has been catering to the local community since the 1950s. It had an American Western theme, which was waning in popularity. So when Grévin and Company bought it, we brought back elements to the park that are explicit references to local geographic characteristics, such as the windy seaside. We ushered in a new mascot, a local puppet named Jacques from the community of Lille. He leads guests through their visits and is featured in, and the centerpiece of, a parade. And in keeping with the theme of water, we’ve opened rides such as Sea Gone Wild, a rapid river.”

When it takes over a park, Grévin’s tack is to replace the few people on top, but to retain all the other employees. The company strives to involve all the echelons of employees in the decision-making process, eschewing the top-down, authoritarian style of so many parks. “We like the managers of each park to cultivate an owner’s spirit, take the lead developing the identity and content of the facilities. Our style is collaborative, with shared management and respect for distinct personalities,” Gourveitch says.

Grévin and Company stresses popular culture-style entertainment, family-centered rides and experiences, and local culture. “Everything is accessible to families,” says de Bosredon. “The European public isn’t as interested in thrill rides as the American public. And they are very expensive. We just opened a new ride at Parc Asterix—the Transdemonium, the first family ghost train.”

Grévin and Company has even established its own production company to handle the architecture, stage design, landscaping, interior decoration, theater production, choreography, special effects, engineering, graphics, and illustration of its amusements.

For the 2003 season, Grévin Productions has produced new settings for Bagatelle; a play area for children at Avonturenpark Hellendoorn; new figures for Grévin and France Miniature, including author and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy; and the complete stage design for the Aqurium du Val de Loire. Grévin Productions received the THEA Award from the Themed Entertainment Association two years in succession: in 2001 for the Oxygenarium at Parc Asterix, and in 2002 for the interior decoration of the grand Aquarium Saint-Malo.

When asked what the future holds for a company so rapidly advancing, Gourveitch answers: “More acquisitions. The European market is going to consolidate.” Gourveitch believes that out of 10 businesses in the amusement industry, roughly two will go out of business, three will remain the same, and five will be transferred to a different owner.

“It would be very challenging for a non-European company to lead that transformation,” he says. “The segments of consumers are very different, very fragmented. Each market in Europe is extremely different.”

Gourveitch notes that Northern Europe has a longer-standing tradition of amusement parks than Southern Europe, due to economic factors, market density, and even climate, something Grévin’s international senior management team takes into consideration when pursuing new sites. With 81 years of accumulated experience between the nine team members, acquisition decisions are made with a great deal of know-how. The latest project to receive the green light from this team is Bioscope, a joint project between Grévin and Company and the local communities in Alsace. With a planned opening date of 2005, the Bioscope will be the first time since its Parc Asterix days that Grévin and Company will create a park from scratch.

“The Bioscope project came about at the initiative of the local government,” says Gourveitch. “They wanted to build a forward-looking park about health, well-being, and the environment.” The content of the Bioscope will deal with the internal balance of humankind, adjusting to extreme environments, and the equilibrium between humans and the outside environment. Guests will stroll from pavilion to pavilion, buffeted, temporarily, with varying temperatures and other stimuli. Concepts as varied as the nature of dreams, one’s emotional experiences with music, and the impact of pollution will be presented in a manner that engages children as young as six or seven years old, and yet remains pertinent to an adult visitor as well.

Beyond that, the company will continue to acquire only sites it feels have something to offer, a real investment in a community, culture, and geography.

As de Bosredon puts it: “We’re not growing for the sake of growing.
We’re growing for the fun of it.”