UK economy is almost completely reliant on the service sector which is currently taking a huge hit (we are also in a recession).
I would love a park to come along and challenge Merlin in the UK but we have seen this all before from the London Resort (this is their 2nd go at a public consultation). I don’t think complexity is the problem here, they just don’t have the investors.
Anyone with any knowledge of the industry knows their numbers don’t add up. Only 2 non Disney parks get more than 5 million guests a year in Europe and they have taken decades of development to get to that point, if the predicted guest numbers are dodgy what else is? If I was an investor I would be incredibly cautious about this.
They have repeatedly insisted that they have the financial backing to progress with the project. Gerbeau has previously said that they are not trying to raise any debt or equity, and that the project does not need funding to be raised by investors due to its owners.
Provided they can get the DCO application in by the end of this year (which seems to have been the cause of the numerous delays and setbacks), KEH have said that they will continue to back the project financially.
By 2024 (the current target date for the Resort’s opening), most indicators seem to suggest that the economy will have recovered to a reasonable degree (for example, air travel is predicted to recover by 2024, and I’m assuming a similar date is expected for other forms of foreign travel & tourism. The theme park industry specifically is expected to recover by 2022/2023.), so the developers currently have nothing to lose in pressing ahead with the project.
With regards to your point about the projected guest figures, Gerbeau said in the BBC Southeast interview that they are aiming for 4 million guests in the first year (roughly comparable with parks like PortAventura, and not a huge amount more than Legoland Windsor, the current leading park in the UK, got in 2019), so assuming that the waterpark takes up around 500,000-1.5 million of this (at a guess), that leaves around 2.5-3.5 million for the park. Given that PortAventura got 2.7 million guests in its first year in 1995 (and this may not even represent the first 365 days of operation), I’d say that this seems very much attainable.
The 12.5 million figure is not expected until 2038, by which point the completed Resort will have had around a decade of operation and growth. When you split this between all of the different attractions at the Resort (2 theme parks & waterpark), I’d say a 90:10 split between theme park attendance and waterpark attendance seems reasonable, perhaps slightly more weighted in the direction of theme park attendance. With that in mind, that leaves the two theme parks with around 11 million in targeted guest figures, meaning that they would get around 5.5 million each, assuming roughly equal distribution of guest figures. With a total 14 years of Resort operation and growth (assuming it opens in 2024), that also seems attainable to me; Disneyland Park in Paris grew by at least 3-4 million during this time frame, so it’s definitely not impossible with good investment over time.
With regards to the point about public consultations, I should stress that these are not a repeat of the ones conducted in 2014/15. These are the final stage consultations before submitting the DCO application, whereas those were early stage. This is evidenced by the fact that they have quite majorly revised the proposal using the feedback from these earlier rounds of consultations (for example, the Resort has been made quite a bit smaller, and targeted guest figures have gone down accordingly), and they have conducted in-depth reports since 2015 in order to determine how they can do this.
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, I’m only compiling the evidence I’ve found so far through various sources. I’m not saying the project is certain to go ahead by any means (if 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that anything can happen), but to me, the evidence I see tells me that the chances of it coming to fruition are far, far higher than many think they are, and they’re growing with every positive step that occurs, in my opinion, no matter how small it may be.
Of course, you are all entitled to your own opinion as to whether you think it will happen or not, and I apologise if any of my evidence is wrong or if my post comes across rude or patronising, as that’s not what I intended at all. I was only trying to evidence my opinion a little, as I know I’m in a huge minority. I won’t claim to be an economist or have in depth knowledge of economics by any means; I’m only forming an opinion based on the evidence I’ve found and can see from those involved.
EDIT: Sorry for the really long post.
