More Dollars vs Euro’s
Already explained how I feel Disney is missing the opportunity to get more European visitors in the previous Dollar vs Euro blog entry I wanted to take the time and take it even a little further, proofing that the Disney Company should really look into getting those Europeans to their parks. The European market is a big one, one that could generate a lot of extra guests and money. Other players on the market will not wait for the European to find out about their offers, they’ll make sure to make themselves noticed on that market. Look at Dubai (again), will they wait and only try to fulfill there goal by only targeting the Arabic world? I don’t think so. The European market will be a big one for them and they will make enough advertisement around the whole of Europe to make sure they will visit their new parks.
But they are not the only once. Spain is already a tourist magnet but will still do more to get even more people to visit them. Go to a travel office and you’ll see a collection of brochures and posters about Spain, the once for Walt Disney World are not being displayed like that. Most of the time they’re hidden on the bottom shelves or you’ll have to ask for them. But imagine what will happen when Spain newest venture is going to open!
A digitally generated illustration released by the regional government of Aragon on Dec. 13, shows the Gran Scala. It will have 32 casinos, five theme parks, around 70 hotels — including one modeled after the Pentagon that will be at an espionage theme park called “Spyland” — and a bullring, officials said. It’s estimated to require some $25 billion in investment and is expected to be ready by 2015. (MSNBC article from December)
There expecting 25 million visitors a year… and I’ll be one of them. Why? Did you see the small print; “5 theme parks”. Obviously I will go because I am interested and intrigued by the project, but to get 25 million people to visit every year they will also have to put a lot of their money into advertisement. Only then will the be able to get the people to visit. My real question however is how many of these 25 million people could be potential Walt Disney World visitors?
Europeans are ready to come to Walt Disney World, but some of them don’t know it yet. Tell them about Walt Disney World and why they should visit.
Enough about this now. I promise. Back to my regular Disney geekness. Otherwise people might think I am no real Disney fanatic. I am though, I love Disney, but sometimes you have to be critical, even to the things you love.
Picture Gran Scala Copyrights Ho/Reuters
March 15th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I can’t resist anymore … I think there are a few factors to consider when questioning the handling of the “WDW-issue” in Europe:
a) DLRP while sucessful still needs more guests in the long run - and that is in the interest of TDWC as well, so laying any WDW / DL advertisement off might actually be a decision taken to strengthen DLRP. Afterall why would a European pay top buck for a short break at DLRP when the same or only slightly more money gets him a longer stay at WDW with more parks to visit??
b) why should TWDC spend lots of money on advertising WDW in Europe? I don’t know about the UK (where there is obviously some advertisement for WDW), but in continental Europe TWDC is not represented by its own travel company and there is no dedicated hotline for non-English speaking guests to book WDW vacations. Instead those are sold / offered through partners which include them in their regular US / Florida brochures. Therefore it would be these companies who would have to advertise WDW.
c) at least the typical German Florida-tourist would only stop-over in Orlando. A Florida-vacation for them is either a beach vacation or something like a self-drive trip around Florida. So they are not really the core target group of WDW.
d) it should also be considered that TWDC in continental Europe is still living in the past - they still center everything around the “family with young children” as potential guests for a Disney vacation. They haven’t yet begun to target the audience of teenagers and older singles, couples etc. But young children are a very difficult audience to target for WDW since they (outside the UK) in Europe will not yet speak English and therefore only have a limited experience. This might also play a part in why they don’t really push the US resorts.
Your thoughts on this??
March 15th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Forgot I wanted to say something about that new Spanish concept as well:
I’d call that a very dubious project. The numbers look extremly off IMHO.
Let’s start it with 25 million guests per year. Hmmm … how did they count that number? Is that 25 million unique guests, each of which spends several days in the “resort” and visits several parks? Otherwise the number would be too small to finance it. Also how many of these 25 million are supposed to visit one of the five theme parks?? Your regular casino guest is not necessarily interested in theme parks as Las Vegas had to learn.
With 32 (!) casinos the core of the resort seem to be the casions, but ebven then 32 is a really high number, we are talking Las Vegas style numbers here, unless each of the 32 casinos is really small. Plus casinos attract a different audience from theme parks. So I fear of the 25 million not too many will actually visit the 5 theme parks. In other words: there might not be enough guests there to sustain the parks even in the (usually) rather “friendly” calculated concepts.
70 hotels?!? Hmmm … how big are they supposed to be? The number is not of much interest unless they give us a number of the rooms / beds.
And finally: 25 billion US-$? That doesn’t sound like much to me. In fact it is not enough in my mind to set up
- 5 theme parks
- 32 casinos
- 70 hotels
plus: infrastructure (roads etc.) and all the small things you need like restaurants, shops etc.
When DLRP was set up the overall costs run up to about 5 billion US-$ - and that included only one theme park, 7 hotels, one night time entertainment center plus infrastructure. Now consider that you plan on building 5 theme parks 10 times as many hotels, 32 casinos. Hmmm … and I don’t even say anything about the fact that since 1992 we have had some inflation and in addition the US-$’s value has come downhill quite a bit.
In other words … I wouldn’t expect this resort to make it off the drawing boards unless someone finds some extra billions … and whether it could be a sucess I doubt more than a bit.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Yes, I would think those numbers are highly suspect. How are they going to attract that many people all the way to Spain? That’s probably more than the total number of visitors to Spain itself, and no casino/resort complex can survive on just local visitors. Methinks it is a speculation plan that will eventually end up much smaller.