Funworld October 2008
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“When you’re going a new way, you have to take a risk.Without risk, you won’t be successful,” says Roland Mack of Europa-Park’s metamorphosis into a destination resort. As the park’s managing director, he can afford to be confident with four profitable hotels and a hotelier of the year award under his belt. Europa-Park was an early entrant into the theme park resort business, a model brought over to the European market in 1992 with the opening of Disneyland Resort Paris, featuring six specially designed hotels and a campground. Today, parks across Europe—Phantasialand, PortAventura, Alton Towers, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Tivoli, and Heide Park to name just a few—are adding hotels and accommodations, aiming to tap into the short breaks market. Liseberg in Sweden is even offering floating berths inGullbergskajenQuay as well as hotel rooms.
The decision to develop depends on the scale and maturity of a theme park, she says. “For a very rough rule of thumb, if a theme park has more than 2 million visitors this may be an excellent route forward. Below that, you’d have to see if there were any other benefits and considerations. The theme parks that have been successful have already got to a sufficient scale, in terms of their location, their attendance, or their physical size, before they’ve added hotels.” Mack and his team began planning Europa-Park’s first hotel, El Andaluz, in 1993-1994, when research showed guests were staying nearby to enjoy more than one day at the park. By building a hotel on site, Mack hoped to bring more leisure spending back into Europa-Park.At the same time, he set about expanding the park’s attractions to handle a larger number of guests. Going Solo After the launch of El Andaluz in 1996,Mack built three more four-star themed hotels in relatively quick succession: Castillo Alcazar, inspired by Spanish architecture; the Colosseo, an homage to ancient Rome; and last year’s debut, Santa Isabel, styled as a Portuguesemonastery. Integrated convention centers and spas are now part of the business. In the latest hotels, Mack says: “We’ve put much more energy into a variety of ideas, not just into the beds, food stations, and restaurants. There are bigger and more comfortable relaxation areas and suites that are more themed.” The results speak for themselves: “We started out in the first year with 550 beds and 87.5 percent occupancy. We’re now up to 3,200 beds and occupancy runs at about 94 percent,” saysMack.With all of its facilities, including a caravan park and a tepee village, the Europa-Park site can accommodate some 5,000 people. Inevitably, the hotels have changed the park’s business. “It’s totally different because you have to organize much more entertainment in the evening,” saysMack. “You have to deliver higher quality in the park because people want to have marriages and birthdays there. When you’re serving international conventions, they’re looking at the quality of the rooms, the food, the convention, and the service.We used to close the park at the end of October; now we’re open in December. We open one hotel year round, so we’re really developing the park business into a yearly business.” Leisure operators like Parken Sport og Entertainment are now willing to invest in projects near theme parks. Parken’s new Lalandia property inDenmark is taking shape close to Legoland Billund. According to Lalandia-Billund director Jan Harrit, the project is costing €230 million (US$357 million). It will include “Seven hundred sixty-one vacation homes with 5,000 beds, four restaurants, and five shops. There’s a family entertainment center with a bowling center, indoor dry-play area, adventure golf, sports arena, fitness center, and a giant indoor waterpark. The activities are under one roof,meaning that we can deliver the same experience 365 days a year.” The first 200 vacation homes, for which Lalandia acts as landlord, were available to rent this summer. Lalandia-Billund is scheduled to open on June 1, 2009. Boosting Billund The lure of attraction locations is becoming evident. Center Parcs UK, controlled by the Blackstone Group, is investing £200 million (US$393 million) in its fifth British site, close to Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire. Speaking to The (London) Times inMay,Center Parcs chief executive Martin Dalby said 17 million people live within a two-hour drive of the site. Meanwhile, French holiday group Pierre et Vacances—which operates the Center Parcs and Sunparks vacation brands—is working on a Villages Nature project in partnership with EuroDisney SCAin Paris. Located six kilometers (3.7 miles) from the Disney parks, the new development is set to include up to 5,000 holiday residences and around 130,000 square meters (1.4 million square feet) of leisure facilities. The first phase of construction could be launched in 2010. Hotels: A Very Different Business Merlin parks with accommodations are definitely generating more multiday visitation, he says: “We’re not necessarily getting a lot more visitors, but we’re getting more visits because people are coming for two or three days. From a revenue perspective, secondary spends will rise.Also, customers who stay over tend to be more satisfied because they’re not running around from ride to ride.” Over the next three years, Fisher intends to keep investing in Merlin’s current hotel stock. “We would hope to put more hotels on some of the properties,” he says. “Thorpe Park has a hotel planning application in. Gardaland already has a four-star hotel, we’ve added a Sea Life business there, and we’ve been talking about another accommodation offering.” Fisher aims to createmore second gates to entice guests to stay longer, tapping into brands such asMadame Tussauds, Sea Life, Dungeons, and Legoland Discovery Centres. Europa-Park, too, is planning to increase its hotel offerings, complementing a huge park expansion that kicks off next year with a new Iceland-themed area and roller coaster. “Absolutely, we plan to expand,” saysMack. “The larger the park is going to be, the more rooms we need because the number of people who want to stay more than a day is getting bigger.We’re doing about 14-15 percent of our business in overnight stays, so there is a big market to develop.” Fisher believes the best hotels continue the immersive experiences that attract guests to theme parks. “The big thing is tomake sure the connection is correct with the park. It’s not just about bricks and beds. When we bought Alton Towers, the two businesses were pretty separate and the hotels needed to have a bigger input from the park. You’re in danger if you don’t see them as one resort.We have to make sure we’re significantly different from the million and one hotels out there, so that people want to stay with us.” What operators must realize, Mack says, is that it’s a totally different market and undertaking, when you’re investing in and operating a hotel as part of a park. “We had to learn a lot and it’s a much harder business than just running a park,” he says. “You need a lot of investment. You have to have quality. You have to have qualified people. A hotel is very different from what you do every day in the park but, as long as you can combine them, which we have succeeded doing, it’s a big chance to develop your park in the future.”
Juliana Gilling is a specialist attractions journalist. E-mail: julianagilling@gmail.com |
So is this drive to develop European parks into destination resorts always the right way forward? “It’s not the best route for everyone,” says LesleyMorisetti, director at international consulting firm Economics Research Associates. “The ones who’ve got it right have done it step by step.”
HOTEL DEVELOPMENTS ARE NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION FOR SMALLER PARKS where there are other commercial advantages. “Smaller parks that are strategically located—where they may benefit from a corporate market—could support a hotel because they’re not dependent purely on park visitors,” says ERA’s Lesley Morisetti. She points to Chessington World of Adventures in the UK, where a 150-bed Holiday Inn opened in July 2007. “It’s in an excellent location froma corporate point of view because of the business traffic in that area.That helps with seasonality as well because on-site hotels are very popular when the parks are open, but there’s far less reason to go when the parks aren’t open,” she says. 