Europa Park has increased their accommodation offering a lot, but so have a lot of theme parks. Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures and Blackpool Pleasure Beach are all theme parks that have significantly increased their accommodation. The fact that Europa Park’s visitor numbers have kept on rising suggests the holiday makers from further afield are adding to local visitors, rather than taking away from them.
I think Europa Park does sometimes do promotions aimed more at locals, particularly during the winter season. But there’s limited opportunity for them to do local discounts. Europa Park clearly offers a higher quality product than your typical UK park with longer opening hours, better maintenance, costumed staff, carefully manicured flower beds, lots of live entertainment etc. It simply wouldn’t be viable to do that with much of a discount.
Inevitably some local will have been priced out the market, but if a lot of them couldn’t afford it, Europa Park’s model and growth wouldn’t have worked. That region is very prosperous with a fairly high rate of hi tech manufacturing. It’s well connected for exports, with a fairly central location in Europe, whilst the euro has kept the currency competitive. The German education system is more vocational with a higher rate of the skills a high tech economy needs. Strasbourg is a major ‘local’ market for Europa Park, and that’s also a prosperous city, with fast connections to Paris, and the European parliament. The Rhine is an important shipping route, which has strengthened the region on both sides of the river. Shipping on its own doesn’t make a region prosperous, and the UK has several deprived towns with major ports. But shipping can really boost an economy when it’s combined with other factors. The key thing here is that the Rhine isn't just shipping in imports. It's shipping in raw materials that are processed into goods, and then exported again. German law has prevented the proliferation of zero hour contracts, although low wages can still be a problem. Whilst German does have housing shortages and a housing crisis, tighter regulation has prevented it becoming as bad as the UK’s.
I don’t think Europa Park’s successful because they’ve turned their back on locals. They’re successful because most locals can afford a superior product. That’s a very simplistic analysis and there are hundreds of other reasons, but the points still stands.
I think Europa Park does sometimes do promotions aimed more at locals, particularly during the winter season. But there’s limited opportunity for them to do local discounts. Europa Park clearly offers a higher quality product than your typical UK park with longer opening hours, better maintenance, costumed staff, carefully manicured flower beds, lots of live entertainment etc. It simply wouldn’t be viable to do that with much of a discount.
Inevitably some local will have been priced out the market, but if a lot of them couldn’t afford it, Europa Park’s model and growth wouldn’t have worked. That region is very prosperous with a fairly high rate of hi tech manufacturing. It’s well connected for exports, with a fairly central location in Europe, whilst the euro has kept the currency competitive. The German education system is more vocational with a higher rate of the skills a high tech economy needs. Strasbourg is a major ‘local’ market for Europa Park, and that’s also a prosperous city, with fast connections to Paris, and the European parliament. The Rhine is an important shipping route, which has strengthened the region on both sides of the river. Shipping on its own doesn’t make a region prosperous, and the UK has several deprived towns with major ports. But shipping can really boost an economy when it’s combined with other factors. The key thing here is that the Rhine isn't just shipping in imports. It's shipping in raw materials that are processed into goods, and then exported again. German law has prevented the proliferation of zero hour contracts, although low wages can still be a problem. Whilst German does have housing shortages and a housing crisis, tighter regulation has prevented it becoming as bad as the UK’s.
I don’t think Europa Park’s successful because they’ve turned their back on locals. They’re successful because most locals can afford a superior product. That’s a very simplistic analysis and there are hundreds of other reasons, but the points still stands.
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