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Stargazing Pods

MakoMania said:
Merlin always say on their investor calls that their long term ambition is to have 1000+ rooms at Gardaland and Alton Towers.
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1000?! That's way too many! Towers currently have 592 rooms on site, and this application adds 102, which comes to 694, and then the EV expansion adds 70, which comes to 764... my God! How many hotels do they want? They've still got another 236 rooms to add before they reach 1000, and that's including all the future proposals! In my opinion, only highly visited resorts like WDW and Universal Orlando need over 1000 hotel rooms. Alton Towers most certainly does not need more hotel rooms than it currently has.
 
In the latest trading update Nick Varney again stated the 1000 room target. They have used Europa Park and Port Aventura as the examples of why this is a good idea, apparently EP has around 1000 rooms.

Of course they fail to mention the theme parks attached to those rooms are vastly superior to Alton Towers which is which why they have much higher attendance to support the rooms.
 
But EP sits at 80-90-odd% occupancy for most of the year, so they need more rooms. They're opening another new hotel, but that's to support one of Europe's largest waterparks. Merlin have decimated the ride offering, adding lower capacity replacements, while closing one of the hotels for half the year. What is there to warrant more rooms, except "monkey see, monkey do"?
 
What are you all talking about? You heard what Nick said in the article. This short-sighted profiteering is clearly going to leave him a lot richer than any of us. So he clearly knows better.

Seriously though, how much more mileage can they eek out of the Lego brand and trading off of established but deteriorating park brands to fill cheaply built accommodation? When that runs out, where next?
 
Indeed chaps, all these sexy sounding claims are designed to be lapped up by investors. "Hey, look over there!" tactics to divert attention onto eye watering margins that accommodation can achieve, and away from the failing parks they built around.
 
The increased accommodation offering is probably seen as 'future-proofing' the resort.

They clearly see ATR as getting back to the 3m-a-year bracket sometime, so want the accommodation to match.

Even if the way the park is operated is not in any way like that...
 
Can you imagine 3 million visitors per year at AT nowadays. Monorail queues, ride queues, food queues, Guest Service queues...

It would be total carnage.
 
AstroDan said:
The increased accommodation offering is probably seen as 'future-proofing' the resort.

They clearly see ATR as getting back to the 3m-a-year bracket sometime, so want the accommodation to match.

Even if the way the park is operated is not in any way like that...
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Delusional basically.

I don't think they do actually expect the park to reach 3m + any time soon, but they want investors to think that it will. Building more accommodation is probably their way of trying to build false confidence.

Bit like when Tesco knew the game was up and things were heading south in the late 2000's yet continued to rack up massive debts on vanity ventures abroad and building 2 storey out of town hyper stores that they didn't need. All used to hide declining business performance and build false confidence with investors.
 
venny said:
Can you imagine 3 million visitors per year at AT nowadays. Monorail queues, ride queues, food queues, Guest Service queues...

It would be total carnage.
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It would be; but rightly or wrongly, the reason they have cut so much is because the park is getting far less than it did. The park could handle 3,000,000/year in 2010, for example.

I would imagine that if the park suddenly saw a 500,000 guests/year increase, they'd be able to get budgets to re-open attractions and food outlets - otherwise the KPIs would suffer. And we all know that KPIs are the one thing they react to.
 
The idea of adding more accommodation seems a strange one considering that they can barely afford to operate their current offerings. I assume that this is a cheaper version of the Enchanted Village expansion that they already have planning permission for, although we will find out more once plans are online.

There has to be more dining options coming with this though surely. If full there could be up to an extra 408 guests staying on resort (assuming 4 people per room). Breakfast at the Enchanted Village is busy enough as it is.

:)
 
If this is affordable, good quality accommodation, this might be pretty good...

But another hotel? Seriously, why...

I’d be interested to know Alton’s actual occupancy numbers for their current hotels to see what they’re actuly like
 
Inferno said:
I’d be interested to know Alton’s actual occupancy numbers for their current hotels to see what they’re actuly like
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As SLH is only open between May & September, I'm thinking not very high...

By the way, thank you to whoever changed the thread title for me and moved the thread!

On another side note, does anyone know whether this is part of/replacing the EV expansion or whether this is a completely different proposal and the three-stage EV expansion is happening as well?
 
Nick Varney endorsed the concept of barrels on his LinkedIn blog, so it likely they will resemble the barrels at Legoland Deutschland. The barrels concept will probably be all part of the Enchanted Village complex, together with Treetop Quest (when it decides to open!).
 
bluesonichd said:
Edit : or good. Or quality :rolleyes:
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I think they have started to learn from this, CBeebies Hotel is getting much better reviews for the quality well thought out large hotel rooms than Splash Landings got for their tiny little rooms.
Yes the barrels are small but if they can offer a quality camping experience (and they've had practice at Warwick Castle) then this could be a good addition.
But it might make more sense to offer Splash Landings at a lower price and open the hotel rooms more often, particularly as the UK weather is only good for camping for a month or so in between the rain!
 
In theory if there is more supply of rooms then prices for some of them should be cheaper than they are at the moment. Let's wait and see if that actually happens though, somehow I doubt it.

:)
 
Rob said:
In theory if there is more supply of rooms then prices for some of them should be cheaper than they are at the moment. Let's wait and see if that actually happens though, somehow I doubt it.

:)
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I think I made this point on another thread that there is a point where it isn't worth dropping the price further as you would then need more staff to serve those guests. If one housekeeper can clean 30 rooms and you have 20 booked then it makes sense to offer a low price to book another five rooms. But if you book another 20 then you need a second housekeeper to then service the extra 10 rooms you have booked over what the first member of staff has capacity to do.
 
jon81uk said:
I think I made this point on another thread that there is a point where it isn't worth dropping the price further as you would then need more staff to serve those guests. If one housekeeper can clean 30 rooms and you have 20 booked then it makes sense to offer a low price to book another five rooms. But if you book another 20 then you need a second housekeeper to then service the extra 10 rooms you have booked over what the first member of staff has capacity to do.
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Then what is the point of even considering building more accommodation at Alton Towers?

If Merlin want both Towers and Gardaland to have 1,000 hotel rooms then they need to operate the resorts accordingly.

:)
 
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