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Oakwood Discussion

Terrible to hear this news. It was a park I wanted to visit for ages but I could never justify the long journey and prices when even some parks in Europe are easier and cheaper to get to.

Hopefully Speed gets a new home, but Megafobia is pretty much done unless a miracle happens. Now I've missed out on it and The Ultimate :(
 
Dave said:
Because I’m fed up of rich business owners and farmers moaning about non-issues.
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Yeah, one problem is the top executives are taking so much more money, it used to be only a bit more than the normal worker (like £250,000/year) but now it is multiple millions per year, whilst they complain that an extra £100,000 per year would harm the company massively.

I don't think this is a problem oakwood had, as I think it was more under invested, keeping it a bare minimum so people stopped going
 
Even if it was NI/NMW wages that were the final nail in the coffin, as far as that goes, tough. People shouldn’t be expected to work for abysmal wages to keep a dying theme park crawling on. If the business isn’t viable, id rather it closed than have gov policy that perpetuates a low wage/cash-poor government spiral.
 
Martin said:
Wonder how many of these park big bosses upset about having to pay staff a bit more have considered paying themselves a bit less to make up for it? Not one I bet
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Which boss would that be then?

Oakwood was struggling when it was bought out when it was a family business. Taxing business to the point of closure isn't good for anyone. Say a big boss takes a big pay cut to keep the park open for another year what happens after that? It still doesn't make the park viable.

People forget it's not minimum wage that's the problem it's a combination of minimum wage, business rates relief reduction, NI increases and rising electricity costs. It's already having a big impact on the sector. It's no coincidence that Pleasure beach and Adventure Island are all making cutbacks.
 
Quantum said:
Which boss would that be then?

Oakwood was struggling when it was bought out when it was a family business. Taxing business to the point of closure isn't good for anyone. Say a big boss takes a big pay cut to keep the park open for another year what happens after that? It still doesn't make the park viable.

People forget it's not minimum wage that's the problem it's a combination of minimum wage, business rates relief reduction, NI increases and rising electricity costs. It's already having a big impact on the sector. It's no coincidence that Pleasure beach and Adventure Island are all making cutbacks.
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By all means go and show me how poverty stricken the directors of Aspro are.

France has a more aggressive tax regime than the UK, they have theme parks, some run by the same company, these people are lying to you.
 
There’s also the quite obvious elephant in the room that nobody is choosing to holiday in places like “sunny” old South Wales anymore when you can get £20 return flights out to far nicer destinations like Spain, meaning compared to even a decade or so ago they just weren’t getting the passing trade. That, combined with the simple fact that Oakwood never was a destination park outside of diehard enthusiasts going solely for Megafobia, makes it difficult to understand how it’s even lasted this long.
 
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Interesting how so many people are sticking up for big businesses when Labour bring in an increase to employers’ NI contributions, yet back in 2021 when the Tories increased workers’ NI contributions, I barely heard anyone stick up for the workers. Mad double standards.

In 2021, not only were workers’ NI contributions increased, the operators of theme parks such as Oakwood and Adventure Island (the two currently moaning about this change) had their VAT rates cut to less than half what it normally would be.

Did the owners of Oakwood, or Philip Miller of Adventure Island, use the money that they saved from the VAT cut to give their staff a pay rise in order to offset the money the employees would have lost through Rishi Sunak increasing their employee NI contributions? Of course they didn’t. They just enjoyed the extra profits. Now they’re expecting sympathy from the public when their employer NI contributions get put up? Well they don’t get an ounce of sympathy from me.

My sympathies are with the workers who’ve lost their jobs.

Oakwood’s fate is due to 17 years of under-investment from Aspro. If a multi million euro company like Aspro can’t afford to pay their staff properly, then they should be selling the park to an operator who can. But I imagine they won’t want to do that, as they’d rather relocate the rides to their other parks and sell the Oakwood land off for non-leisure developments. Again it’s the staff I feel sorry for.
 
While the rise in NI may not be the main factor there is no doubt it is having an impact across many business sectors.

Just reading an unrelated story on BBC news this evening about a local family run bakery which has been going for 50 years is closing. They quote rising costs as the main factor but also mention “inflation, energy costs along with wage and National Insurance increases have all contributed to this decision.”

We had a builder around recently doing some work on the house. The builder is not normally available but he was on this occasion. He said many local businesses are cancelling jobs due to having to spend the money on rising wage costs amongst other costs increasing so had some free time (very rare according to him).

Like I said, it is not the main factor, but there is no denying it is a contributory factor to some businesses struggling/going under.
 
one thing I have seen is some heritage thing similar to steam railways, where enthusiasts get together and buy it, whilst I would like to see it I think it would be extremely expensive (probably £1m+) as you aren't just buying a train, you are buying the track, control and electronics etc of the whole ride.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Interesting how so many people are sticking up for big businesses when Labour bring in an increase to employers’ NI contributions, yet back in 2021 when the Tories increased workers’ NI contributions, I barely heard anyone stick up for the workers. Mad double standards.

In 2021, not only were workers’ NI contributions increased, the operators of theme parks such as Oakwood and Adventure Island (the two currently moaning about this change) had their VAT rates cut to less than half what it normally would be.

Did the owners of Oakwood, or Philip Miller of Adventure Island, use the money that they saved from the VAT cut to give their staff a pay rise in order to offset the money the employees would have lost through Rishi Sunak increasing their employee NI contributions? Of course they didn’t. They just enjoyed the extra profits. Now they’re expecting sympathy from the public when their employer NI contributions get put up? Well they don’t get an ounce of sympathy from me.

My sympathies are with the workers who’ve lost their jobs.

Oakwood’s fate is due to 17 years of under-investment from Aspro. If a multi million euro company like Aspro can’t afford to pay their staff properly, then they should be selling the park to an operator who can. But I imagine they won’t want to do that, as they’d rather relocate the rides to their other parks and sell the Oakwood land off for non-leisure developments. Again it’s the staff I feel sorry for.
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I don't think people are sticking up for big businesses, I think we are just stating that the NI rise is a contributing factor in decisions like these - not just in the tourism industry but across the whole of the economy - as @GaryH has just mentioned.

In 2022, worker's NI contributions were increased, but not by the % increase seen for employers this time. Then, it was increased by 1.25% from April 2022. But then in November 2022, it was reversed and since then, employee's NI contributions have actually fallen due to further cuts in Jan 2024 (12% to 10%) then from April 2024 down to 8%. Taking my example from a few posts back about a full time worker on minimum wage - they would've been approx £10 a month worse off from that 1.25% increase but now are actually better off than in 2021 (when talking about NI contributions only) due to the rate being 8%. (source: gov.uk table 2.1 and 2.2)

The VAT decrease for the leisure and tourism industry was only temporary to help the sector recover from the pandemic. It was returned to 20% from April 2022. I think it's unfair to suggest businesses should've passed these savings onto their employees by way of a pay rise when it was never going to be a permanent reduction and at the time no-one knew how the recovery was going to pan out - some would argue we are still not yet fully recovered.

Going back to Oakwood, yes you're right, under-investment is probably the main cause, but as others have said, the NI increase could well have been the straw that broke the camel's back after increased energy, food/drink and ride parts costs have been taken into consideration. For me, the saddest thing of all this, apart from the workers loosing their jobs, is that its more than likely that the UK theme park industry will not benefit from having any of the ride hardware because as you say it's more than likely going to end up in their other parks abroad.

As in my previous post, if I have any figures wrong, please correct me.
 
Away from the “is the NI increase responsible/not responsible for Oakwood’s closure” debate for a moment, it’s worth saying tourism in Wales is suffering more than other parts of the UK - take a look at this report from the Welsh government at the end of last year:
Wales received 892,000 visits in 2023, down 13% on 2019 but up 30% on 2022, whilst spend reached £458m in 2023, down 11% on 2019, but up 16% on 2022. Wales remains the only UK nation to not recover spend figures from 2019.

Wales has received the lowest visitor and spend figures across the UK except for the North East of England since 2019, except for spend figures in 2019 when the East Midlands region reported slightly lower figures putting Wales into third lowest
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A struggling attraction like Oakwood is therefore put in a doom spiral - fewer visitors to Wales means less passing trade for days out, reduced income, less money to invest in the park, a lack of new attractions and reason for lapsed customers to return or new visitors to give it a go. Rinse and repeat.

Combine that with Aspro’s general poor management of their park portfolio. Nobody seems to have a good word to say about them - their European theme parks seem to have been run into the ground with minimal investment and their water parks (the more successful arm of the business) are all second-tier attractions. Case in point: TPW have just been to Aqualand in Tenerife which was a ghost town compared with the much more popular Siam Park down the road - the video shows rusting slides, a lazy river falling to bits, exorbitant food prices and chargeable loungers (which other water parks charge you to use a lounger?!)



The current economic conditions are not particularly conducive to running leisure businesses which are being buffeted by all sorts of factors, but the park might have stood a chance of survival if it hadn’t been in the soggy grip of Aspro.
 
@Enter Valhalla VAT cut benefits cash flow but doesn’t affect profits. Companies collect vat on behalf of the government and pay it over. It’s not a p&l item.

The employers National insurance rises are a p&l item and do hit profit.

Just to save the debate that one could offset the other.

Personally, I don’t see NI as an excuse. If the number of an extra £100k is the case - yeh it’s a lot of money to cover - but the park clearly had bigger issues than this.
 
It's convenient to blame external factors for your failings then admitting that it's actually your poor management that is at fault. Of course these factors do also have an impact, but a business like Oakwood has been poorly operated for years Aspro were probably going to have to decide whether to close or sell at some point regardless.

Along with it being a poorly managed park, its location has always been a problem really. It's too far out of the way to have a decent catchment area for day trips, and do enough people who want to visit a theme park whilst on holiday visit that part of Wales to sustain a highly profitable operation? Without seeing the figures the evidence says no. Maybe if the product on offer was more appealing, more people would have gone.

Heck I'd love to have ridden Megafobia again but have not been since 2010 as it's a pain to get to.
 
Rob said:
It's convenient to blame external factors for your failings then admitting that it's actually your poor management that is at fault. Of course these factors do also have an impact, but a business like Oakwood has been poorly operated for years Aspro were probably going to have to decide whether to close or sell at some point regardless.

Along with it being a poorly managed park, its location has always been a problem really. It's too far out of the way to have a decent catchment area for day trips, and do enough people who want to visit a theme park whilst on holiday visit that part of Wales to sustain a highly profitable operation? Without seeing the figures the evidence says no. Maybe if the product on offer was more appealing, more people would have gone.

Heck I'd love to have ridden Megafobia again but have not been since 2010 as it's a pain to get to.
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It's easy to blame the NI rises when other reasons were at play.

The location may not have helped but the park lost their momentum after opening Speed.

If they kept investing regularly in higher quality hardware like they did in the past, the park's fate may be vastly different.

It's also the choices in secondhand hardware as well like M&Ds Space Coaster over Camelot's Knightmare which contributed to the park's demise.

I also thought that making the park better connected by public transport may have helped slightly.

I think the one thing parks need to realise is that to survive, you need regular investment and new attractions.
 
I think the location didn’t help the park, but I don’t think it was insurmountable by any means. The continued success of Folly Farm in the same locale is arguably proof of this.

Had Oakwood been able to continue investing, I do think they wouldn’t have been as inhibited by the location as they ultimately were. I think investment is probably the bigger factor than location; it’s worth remembering that Drayton Manor reached the verge of closure with an excellent, centrally located catchment area in the West Midlands.
 
The NI rise, as well as energy bills, minimum wage increase and other increasing costs obviously don’t help and may have helped them come to this decision, but let’s be real even if all costs remained constant, the best case scenario for the park would’ve been that it limped on for a bit longer.

How many people on this board were actively planning and looking forward to a trip to Oakwood this year? Not many I doubt.
 
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