We constantly receive this question and, despite the years, it remains always the dream of many Italian businessmen.
The water park business is certainly very interesting but, like all investments at this level, it could be very dangerous. We don’t want to change your mind, after all this industry is also part of our business, but we would like to give you some advices that we hope will be useful before making rash decisions about how to open a water park. We could also list all the water parks built or expanded in Italy over the last 20 years that are still open and are an example for all of us but we could also list those who were closed after a few years their implementation, regardless of the motivation.
First of all, what is a water park?
It’s generally an open-air facilty, but always more frequently there are construction of large indoor buildings. Normally the water park is located in areas of high summer tourist density but for some years it’s easy to find them even in areas that traditionally are not, revealing themselves also suitable for urban summer entertainment. The classic attractions of an aquapark are the water slides, the very first structure of water games, which allowed the conception of the idea of aquapark. The water slide can have a lot of different shapes and types: generally in fiberglass or LRTM, it can be open (U-shaped), tubular and therefore closed, with a large section or as a track lying on the ground. In an aquapark there are usually many water slides, but they are different for speed, spectacularity and type of course: this can be very curved, sinusoidal, helix, intersected, in the light or in the dark (Cannon), strongly downhill (Kamikaze ) or very wide section in order to allow the descent of two or more people on rafts. The wave pool is a swimming pool which starts at zero altitude and reaches -2 meters or more, in order to looks like a seashore; a large pumping system permits to create artificial waves that can reach even considerable heights. The slow river or River, a channel in which a circular motion is induced to the water contained in it; the guests, on board of inflatable rafts or huge lifebuoys, let themselves be carried away by the current. And so much more….
The advice we are about to give you are the same as our consultants give to customers who contact us directly and could be helpful to everyone; to businessmen, even if they are engaged in completely different industries, but above all to those who are trying to understand which investment they are going to meet.
First of all there is no price per hectare and we guarantee that you can not make a free offer for a water park, consider that a rough offer commits a team of qualified people for weeks. Whoever does it, or uses the copy-paste technique, or is giving you random numbers; It’s very important to know what works are necessary to build a water park but it’s more important to know who is responsible for carrying out them!
If you already have the land available or have already identified the area where your aquapark will be located, you will need to inform yourself about the shape and nature of the land, the presence of restrictions, the presence of water in the subsoil and the availability of the Municipality or the competent Region to accompany you in carrying out the project. For this purpose, a competent and well-integrated technical office in the area could certainly help you.
Second, not less important, the data relating to the resident population, the presence of tourists and the type of tourism, services for connections to your structure, from roads to highways to public services (bus-trains-airports etc) and the presence of other similar structures: all within a radius of at least 200 km.
Last necessary information, given that the budget is a few million euros, is the opportunity to have good sponsors able to finance your project.
But remember that, once the construction of the park is completed, the most complex phase begins: the management. A company that could potentially bill millions of euros will not be a walk!
For everything else, business plan or other information, there is CEMI.
Write to: commerciale@cemi.it or call +39 0421232844
