Strategize Your Message Theme Park Copes With Difficult Times
By Will Koch
The theme park industry has been called recession-resistant for as long as I can remember. Like many others, I grew up hearing about how the movie business never faded during the Great Depression. The analysis was that people still needed to get out and do something fun. Theme parks, like movies, fill that need.
Nevertheless, this year I was very concerned about our season. Only two parts of our business are “pre-sold” during the off-season – season passes and corporate picnics. While our season-pass numbers last winter were quite strong (exceeding those of the prior or any other year), our corporate picnic business was very soft. In fact, going into the 2009 season, we were down about 60,000 guests, or 40% of our corporate base. The reason is quite simple; obvious, even. It doesn’t make sense to throw a party when you’re laying people off. When corporations have to resort to layoffs as a short-term strategy to protect their businesses in the long term, they cancel their picnics. It’s as simple as that.
Our corporate picnic customers are typically a very loyal group. We host many of the same companies year after year. They find that they draw more of their employees, and that their employees and their families really appreciate a day at Holiday World more than other options they might consider. We make the entire experience very simple for the event planners, and do just about everything necessary to stage the event. We fully expect to see this business return to 2008 levels and grow from there once the recession (and related layoffs) is behind us.
Changing circumstances
In addition to the negative impact on our corporate business, we were already fully committed to a huge capital project: Pilgrims Plunge – the world’s tallest water ride, with a 131-foot drop. This was a huge project, and had a huge budget to go along with it: $4.3 million.
Knowing that we were starting the season in a hole due to the loss of corporate business, we looked to our broader market to minimize or try to offset the loss. The saying is that people stay closer to home when times are tough. We realized that if we were to grow a business segment, it would have to be those folks in our marketing region who might choose to come to Holiday World as an alternative to a longer trip to Florida, the Grand Canyon, etc.
We designed a series of ads to do just this. We used the term “playcation” and built an ad around that. We showed a family talking about how they’d once made a trip to Orlando only to learn that the kids would rather go to Holiday World (something we actually hear fairly often from our guests). As we always do, we used our family (my mom, Pat Koch, and me) to deliver the message to families throughout our area.
Maintaining focus
On the other hand, we stuck to our “non-negotiables:” we’re a family-oriented, fun, clean, safe, friendly park that offers great value to visitors (symbolized by our Free Unlimited Soft Drink program). And, oh, by the way, we also introduced the world’s tallest water ride: Pilgrims Plunge.
Bottom line: the strategy worked. We not only maintained our family business, but grew it enough to offset the loss of corporate picnics. We finished the season with record attendance, up just a little less than 3% compared to our prior record year of 2008.
As we look to 2010, we are building the world’s longest water coaster, Wildebeest, with a budget of $5.5 million. This is going to be a whole lot of fun.
Author: Will Koch is president and CEO of Holiday World & Splashin' Safari in Santa Claus. He can be contacted at (877) 463-2645 or www.holidayworld.com
