Front Gate www.parkworld-online.com


BigQuestion How are you group sales looking this season?


Vic Nolting, Coney Island (Cincinnati): Group sales bookings for the first quarter are actually slightly down from 2010. However, the number of groups who are seriously considering a picnic event have increased significantly. So while groups are booking later and later, we are confident that our business will increase during the 2011 season. It’s hard to say how much, but our reps think that somewhere in the area of 6 to 8% is attainable.


Richard Cadell, Fun City/Brean Leisure Park, UK: Our group sales are accelerating, but it’s fair to say we are very cheap, so it’s a no-brainer. Our group prices are £6 [$9.95//€6.80] or £8.99 [$14.90/€10.15] per person for a £9.99 [$16.50/€11.30] or £19.99 wristband [$33.00/€22.60]. The way we view it is because our groups are predominantly schools, we would be quieter during term time without them, and I think we are very much a repeat visit. If you look at other local attractions, such as my friend Gerry Cottle’s Wookey Hole Caves, it’s a “oncer” so you can’t afford to give it away. In contrast we change every year, but local people might not always be aware of that, so the schools are a good shop window for us. That’s the key to groups, to heavily discount, but we make it up on food and other stuff.


Peter Tartaglia, Playland, USA: In comparing this year to last year at this point in time our group sales are similar in the number of groups booked but higher in the number of admissions sold by 28%. We are cautiously optimistic that this trend will continue especially if camp


enrolments are higher this year.


Ups & Downs


Knot Alive - Knut – the celebrity polar bear – has died at the age of four. Abandoned by his mother and hand-raised by a zookeeper, the bear was a star attraction at Berlin Zoo


Swedish Success - Mikael Ahlerup of Astrid Lindgren World has been recognised as Sweden’s “manager of the year” by Chef (Manager) magazine


Bumper Ban - The Butlins holiday park chain in the UK has banned colissions on its bumper cars for fear of litigation. “The point of our Dodgems is to dodge people, not to run into people,” says a spokesman – rather missing the point


Figures of Fun


50


per cent – projected reduction in water consumption at Walibi Belgium’s new-look Aqualibi water- park


84


number of wheels on each train of Raptor – the new B&M winged coaster at Gardaland in Italy


171


minutes – time taken for 34-year old Noel Bresland to run the equivalent of a marathon on a treadmill inside a capsule on the London Eye


800,800,000


British pounds ($1.3bn/€909m) – group revenue at Merlin Entertainments in 2010, a 4.1% increase over 2009


24,500,000,000


remnimbi ($3.7bn/€2.6bn) – initial investment at Shanghai Disney Resort, 57% of which will be contributed by Disney’s local partner Shanghai Shendi Group


Produced in association with AECOM Economics. www.aecom.com/economics


MAY 2011


5


24 26 28 50


32 20 3841

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