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Park People parkworld-online.com


In the US, Marineland


the average customer does not know that Kennywood is part of Palace Entertainment, which is run by a Spanish company owned by a British fund – and they do not care


We have looked across the portfolio to see if there is any brand we can exploit, and I think there are a few brands we could roll out internationally, but only for specific parks. Obviously we are already working with some international brands, like Warner at Parque Warner Madrid. What I am pressing on with is the presence of IPs in our parks. Families might not care that Parques Reunidos owns the park, but they are interested in the opportunity to meet SpongeBob, the Smurfs, Bugs Bunny or whatever.





BELOW: Naah’s Ark waterpark in Wisconsin is part of Parques


Reunidos’ Palace Entertainment portofolio in the United States


It is now some years since Parques Reunidos took over the running of Parque Warner, a former rival to your many other attractions in Madrid. What lessons were learned as it was integrated into the group? To be fair, I think the park [launched by Six Flags as Warner Bros Movie World in 2002] did not open at the best period of time. I think they probably approached this park in a too American way. I suppose in some ways it’s the same as Disneyland Paris, which when I joined [in the mid-90s] was very much a US-style organisation with a lot of backstage people. Basically we have adapted the product at Parque Warner to make it fit into our organisation by making it more efficient and delegating more power to the operator instead of having people making hundreds of reports and conference calls. At the end of the day what matters is the guest experience.


Would it make sense to reintroduce the Warner Bros name at Movie Park in Germany?


I think it is doing well without it! When you enter into this kind of [licensing] agreement, you know how much it is going to cost you, but you don’t know how much it is going to bring you in return. So for the time being Movie Park will continue with its own positioning. I think if we do anything, it will be reinforcing the quality of the


A holiday cotage at Slagharen in the Netherlands – one of


the venues Yann Caillere identifies as having resort/destiation status


destination and the new attractions we are adding like the Lost Temple, alongside the Nickelodeon IPs and some very nice projects like Halloween, which is very successful for the park.


You recently announced a €50 million expansion for Marineland in France, including a hotel and other facilities. What other parks within the group have potential to be developed into “resort” style operations?


I think I would say some parks have potential as destinations, because a resort to me means somewhere with a beach by the sea, not just adding a hotel. Parque Warner could be a destination park, because the park is huge and we have just launched a nice family waterpark, Warner Beach. So this could be the kind of park that would logically make sense for lodging facilities. We have Slagharen in the Netherlands, where you already have a lot of lodging, we can accommodate up to 3,000 people. Maybe Mirabilandia too, because it is a big park with good attendance very close to a vacation destination [the Italian Riveria], so that could have potential too.


Are you happy staying at the number two position in Europe (and number six worldwide) or have you set your sights higher?


Of course we want be to be up there. We were the number four operator in the world rankings, but because of the newer Chinese players and because we decreased our attendance in 2013 we are currently number six. I am not obsessed about being number four, five or six, because when you see the difference you are talking about 250,000 visitors. That’s nothing, three big weekends and you make up the difference. What is important is our EBITDA, that we are profitable, are doing well at our job, and that the guest satisfaction is high. Then it’s a matter of how and where we grow. That is what’s important, the rest will follow.


parquesreunidos.com 44 SEPTEMBER 2014


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