THEME PARKS
The Kooza cast at PortAventura. The entire Cirque du Soleil company today employs 5,000 staff, including 1,300 artists
proposal, as the Cirque du Soleil big top at PortAventura sold more than 101,000 tickets over its 10 July to 30 August 2014 run. Negotiations are underway for the collaboration to continue, with the Canadian company bringing a different show to the park next year. “One of the keys to the success of
PortAventura is that we present a new project every year,” says Fernando Aldecoa, the park’s general manager. In 2012, the Shambhala rollercoaster launched; in 2013, the new-look Costa Caribe aquatic park opened, and the ride Angkor followed in 2014. Since 2009, the park has invested over $158m (£99m, €125m) in its “internationalisation startegy”. “We want something to make people come back for the summer season. We needed a good hook for the international visitor who mainly comes in summer. If people stay for a week we have to provide enough activities,” he says. Increasing stay time at the resort,
which now has four hotels, is vital to the family-oriented park and increases the spend of the captive audience. The location is conducive to a multi-day destination. On the Costa Daurada on Spain’s east coast, PortAventura is bathed in the Catalan sun throughout the summer, with daily temperatures averaging 26°C and long hours of daylight through the peak months from May to August. With the beach, the city of Barcelona and the chance to watch Cirque du Soleil, tourists have a full
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Two performers maintain hand-to- hand contact throughout a routine that shows incredible balance
menu of activities easily accessible from their accommodation.
PAST EXPERIENCE Cirque du Soleil agreed to the partnership, marking the first tie-up between the Canadian company and a European theme park and the first time the troupe
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has positioned itself closely with a theme park outside its partnerships with Disney at Walt Disney World, Orlando, and previously at Tokyo Disney Resort, Japan. “We were looking for a place to go regu-
larly in the summer and PortAventura was looking for the best quality entertainment it could get, so the marriage happened from there,” says Heather Reilly, com- pany manager for the Kooza show, who oversees the logistics of the $35m (£20m, €26m) tour and its 130 staff. “Furthermore, the collaboration partners two strong A-brands together.” Reilly is right – they’re certainly two big
players, with the park worth an estimated $556m (£348m, €439m) at the end of 2013, and the entire global Cirque du Soleil outfit generating more than $900m (£564m, €711m) in revenues last year. For PortAventura these partnerships
– which are typically bold – have always been carefully selected. In 1997, when the park was just a few years old, it decided that a widely recognised IP would help boost the visibility of its brand. A partnership with NBC Universal ensued, with famous Universal characters licensed to the park, making it more recognisable to overseas customers. The US entertainment giant then bought up the majority of shares and renamed the park Universal’s PortAventura, beofre Universal bowed out in the mid-2000s. By then, Woody Woodpecker, in particular, had become synonymous with the park. The well-known mascot and his friends
AM 4 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
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