INTERVIEW
Dalby’s lowest point was in the coun- cil chamber on 18 July 2006. “We were nine committee members for the project, nine against, and the chair- man decided to cast his vote against. That was a pretty disappointing thing for him to do,” he says. Did Dalby ever think the project wouldn’t happen? “No, I’m too deter- mined for that. After that meeting, we went back to our hotel, had a few beers, then thought, to hell with these guys, we’re going to appeal it.” “It’s only through the perseverance of our company that we made it to this point,” says Dalby. “Many other compa- nies would have fallen at some of the hurdles we’ve had to jump.” It’s time for a rethink of the plan-
ning laws in the UK, argues Dalby. So what would he suggest? “There’s too much that gets tied up in the local process, with the local authority mak- ing decisions on projects that are of a national scale,” he says. “I think there needs to be some sort of process that takes these significant, economically important projects and finds a way to fast track them and bypass the local authority involvement.”
LOOKING AHEAD
After all the challenges and hard work of getting Woburn Forest up and run- ning, the next 12 months will see Center Parcs in a consolidation phase. “The most immediate thing is to bring Woburn Forest into the fold
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(Above) Center Parcs offers a Segway experience, with tuition and a chance to ride the machines on a practice track
– get the place settled in, get every- thing running really well,” says Dalby.
“For the longer term, my role as CEO is to look for opportunities for growing the business, to think about where the next site might be.” Woburn Forest is likely to be the last Center Parcs Village on the UK main- land, with existing villages in the Lake District, the Midlands, the South West, the Eastern counties and of course Woburn, slap bang in the middle. “We’ve got the whole place covered, quite frankly,” says Dalby. “The popu- lation of the UK is 63 million, and two million people will come and have a holiday with Center Parcs in the next 12 months. That’s more than three per cent, so our penetration of the mar- ket is very high. There’s not really any need for another facility.” Ireland is a different matter, however. “There don’t seem to be any facilities in Ireland for the type of customers that come to a Center Parcs. It’s certainly an attractive market for us,” he says. Have they begun looking for sites there yet? “We’ve had a couple of little trips over there to see how the land lies, but there’s nothing specific at this stage.” What would they look for
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in a site? “It’s the same ingredients as over here – some coniferous trees, about 400 acres of land,” he says, adding that somewhere central would be ideal. “You’ve got to think about the whole of Ireland – north and south – as the marketplace.” Further ahead, the company would be open to building a park overseas. He has mentioned China and India in the past, but is vague when I ask him. “Who knows? We don’t have any particular boundaries, so we’d go wherever the market and economic conditions were right. We’ll probably go a bit closer to home first though.” A change of ownership is also likely to be on the cards at some point in the not too distant future – there have been several rumours that Blackstone is exploring its options for exiting the business. “Clearly we’ve got to get Woburn Forest open and stable and get the accounts in place first, so I think it will be some time off yet,” says Dalby. Is he worried about the pos- sibility of the company going public again, after last time? “Not at all,” he insists.“Our world is very different today. The company is much bigger than it was last time, and is in a much stronger position than it was back then. We’d be very happy to do that if that’s what Blackstone wanted to do.” As for Dalby himself, he has no plans to go anywhere. “I’m afraid Center Parcs is stuck with me for a while yet,” he laughs. l
ISSUE 3 2014 © cybertrek 2014
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