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projects. It’s not purely entertainment design, it’s not typical architecture. It’s time for a new term for the industry as a whole and the type of projects we’re doing.
How do you see the industry landscape changing? Dan Thomas: We’re trying to open up the industry. People say the US is a saturated market; Japan is saturated, South Korea is about to be saturated. In fact, the US has 300 million inhabitants and maybe two major tourism destinations with quality theme parks. In the UK, for example, there are a couple of parks but they’re leaning towards amusement parks – mostly rides. So, so-called saturated markets actually
have vast opportunities, especially today when most cities are not built at the human scale. In new markets, like China or Korea, the newly built cities are unappealing and most of the living space is not inspiring at all – most of these places are missing the human touch. Natasha Varnica: At the weekend, people
don’t actually have many places to spend their leisure time. They used to go to shopping malls – which are dying now – and in many places in the world there’s not anything to do that’s special. I think “theme park” is a term that usually describes traditional amusement parks, but for us, a theme park is much more. It’s a rich, elaborate, human scale, soft, immersive environment with intangible values. These types of values are applicable in all kinds of tourism environments, from commercial
Lifestyle centre “Euro Town” brings multimedia attractions and European food and retail to Hyderabad, India
developments with mostly retail, F&B content, to historical heritage sites, national parks, destination resorts, entertainment centres and other types of tourism developments.
How important is it to draw inspiration from the culture and heritage of the site location? Dan Thomas: Cultural values are very important. If you look at successful parks like Disneyland, they are based on culture, a Euro-American culture. The only problem is, it’s the same thing repeated over and over again. New markets have cultures completely untouched in that way. In China, there’s an extremely rich culture that’s practically untapped – or when it’s been attempted it’s not been very successful. Every country has unique cultural elements and we have a very deep interest in using these new cultural environments to develop attractions of world-class quality. If you travel abroad these days, there’s a good chance it’ll be hard to tell where
you are because every place is starting to look the same – that’s the impact of globalisation. For us that’s also the challenge. We want to use these different cultural values to make unique projects. People appreciate that, not just those who live there, but those who travel there.
What’s your design philosophy with these tourism projects? Natasha Varnica: We value encyclopedic knowledge, open-mindedness, imagination and innovation as key factors in the creation of original projects. We try to use cultures, historical and geographical settings in our design approach in a realistic, feasible way that fi ts unique environments of our projects. Tourism projects are created in a comprehensive way so they have layers of gradual immersion into the theme or story of the project. They form a coherent world of rich, enhanced experience. Our projects are about the environment. When it’s mixed-use, it’s not only about
“Old City”, a fantasy theme park near Prague, Czech Republic, will incorporate oriental themes into its historical European setting 58
attractionsmanagement.com AM 2 2015 ©CYBERTREK 2015
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