PW-MAR20-30-33-Industry-Influencer.qxp_Feature 30/03/2020 17:19 Page 32
Industry Influencer
A few years later, when I was working for Universal my
wife and I were sitting in a café in Versailles and because I’m of Polish heritage, I noticed Slovakian writing across the side of a tour bus. It was from the Czech Republic; after the iron curtain came up there were 180 million people keen to find out what was going on across the rest of Europe and they flocked to Paris and the park.”
A new challenge When Frank left Disney in 1987, he joined the one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Dentsu, as an executive vice president based in Los Angeles, advising their Japanese clients with development and expansion ideas, including the City of Osaka and their Harbor Authority, where he advised in the business development, planning and design for the world-renowned Osaka Aquarium or “Kaiyukan” withits Ring of Fire theme. During this time, Universal Studios approached Frank to
become the head of development for the construction of the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida, a role he turned down. He was approached again 9 months later, this time as president of international business development and he took it. During his 17-year tenure Frank identified, negotiated and
planned Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, Universal’s first studio theme park outside of the United States. Frank also spearheaded the acquisition of Universal Mediterranea near Barcelona, Spain; managed Universal’s expansion into China with the Universal Studio Experience Beijing and directed the site selection and negotiations for Universal parks in Shanghai and Beijing. Frank also established plans for Universal projects in Paris, Singapore and Malaysia. Frank continues to play a vital role worldwide through his
strategic consultancy, Stanek Global Advisors LLC. “I’m an old guy but fortunately I’ve been blessed with good health”, he says. “I continue to consult on a piecemeal basis because it keeps me active, it keeps me in tune with the industry and it keeps me young.”
Dealing with the pandemic Directly addressing the current health crisis and its impact on
the global attractions industry, Frank is very clear that the industry should ‘keep calm and carry on’. “Now is not the time to regress or “pull-back” from moving forward with projects that are tourism, entertainment or visitor related,” he says. In fact, this is an ideal time to continue the development of well thought out projects, having attractive, market appealing concepts, sound business plans and execution strategy.” This opinion comes from his experience in the industry which has seen numerous disruptive occurrences that had an emotional, if not short term financial, impact on our industry from economic downturns, short term recessions, industrial job losses, the oil shocks and gasoline shortages mentioned earlier, as well as health related issues impacting the marketplace. “In every case these actions had an economic impact, in varying degrees, upon our industry and in every case the market returned to normal, and in most cases, higher growth within a short period of six to twenty-four months of time,” he says. “During these disruptive occurrences, many projects were
deferred, abandoned or just frozen in a mode of inaction as a result of fear, uncertainty, the unknown and lack of confidence,” he says. “However, some projects continued on the development path moving the project ahead to the opening date as had been initially determined when the project was initiated. Through this continuation of
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From L-R, Richard Rayner of Cushman & Wakefield, Bob Chambers of TPG, and Frank Stanek, TPG Executive Advisor.
The “advantages” for moving forward are outlined below by Frank in an effort to show that now is the time to act with confidence.
The value of Entertainment: • In times of stress the public needs a relief mechanism and entertainment activity has always been a leader in providing stress relief.
• Good entertainment concepts will often have a higher demand during periods uncertainty.
• In the case of financial turmoil, consumers may put off spending on high priced items such as a new automobile or a second home but will still seek out entertainment as a lower cost option during such times.
The positive realities of uncertain times: • The social and economic activities of life run in cycles. The current health and financial uncertainty will run through its cycle and in most cases it will be of short duration but certainly the situation will improve, financial markets will return to positive growth, health issues will be
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managed and solutions found and tourism and attraction visitation will return to normal dynamics. Since the development cycle for a new project in itself is a longer term, two to ten years, stopping development in uncertain times creates an unforced delay in the project realization.
• By maintaining your efforts on well-founded projects, you will be utilising this period of slower activity to continue to bring the project to fruition which in most cases will be completed in time to capture the next wave of growth, both market and financial, to sustain your project after opening.
• In periods of uncertainty, strategic advantages can accrue to those who keep moving the project forward. Competitors less confident, will slow down or stop their projects giving you a chance to overtake and lead. Competition for resources may slow down allowing you to achieve better pricing on project needs for construction and equipment. Turmoil may cause disruption in the labour market which would allow you to recruit more experienced or high demand talent, executives and services as well as improve on time scheduled activities.
This
situation, I understand clearly is very different to a shortage of cash in the financial crisis, but the point is not to throw your hands up. If you believe it was the right project when you started it, it’s the right project now and you have to continue that momentum.
development activity, it became clear that there were certain positive advantages to keep “moving forward”, so to speak when all seemed to be collapsing around us.” Frank continues: “This situation, I understand clearly is very
different to a shortage of cash in the financial crisis, but the point is not to throw your hands up. If you believe it was the right project when you started it, it’s the right project now and
you have to continue that momentum.” Is it feasible to keep momentum during lockdown, I ask?
“Granted, you might have to stop certain aspects of it but from a strategic point of view, you have to maintain a continuance at least of the planning process. If you are in the middle of construction, very few people are going to abandon an investment they have already started just because it’s stopped, they are just going to face a delay.
There should be a core group of people left to think through scenarios of how you pick up the lost time – just quitting is not the answer. Concept design work should be able to go on as people can work remotely and are still able continue to exchange concept drawings, plans and ideas.”
Dealing with the fall-out There is no doubt that there will be huge financial losses for parks and while some of the bigger operators may be able to weather the storm, I’m keen to understand how it might affect the smaller, regional parks and other location based- entertainment which is often family owned and run. “Some of the weaker companies may have leveraged too much, they
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