Paper Example on Theme Park Business: A Historical Overview of Growth and Development

Introduction

Seemingly. the theme park business is a big industry that was established in the nineteenth century. The theme park industry growth has expanded quickly, especially in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. During this era, the Walt Disney Attractions opened many Disneyland theme parks across the globe, such as Tokyo Disney Resort in 1985 and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort that was opened in 2005 (McCarthy,2019). The theme parks businesses have grown because they are recreational sites that give customers pleasure day by day. Additionally, these parks also strive to boost tourism, build the economy, and promote education, leisure, and entertainment for various age groups. Besides, in 2018 Walt Disney Attractions company welcomed 157 million visitors while 67 million visitors visited theme parks owned by Merlin Entertainments Group (McCarthy,2019). It was able to attract close to 51, 000 people a day, with nearly 20.8 million visitors on an annual basis.

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However, the theme park industry in Europe is thriving business and has many advantages. The influence emerged from Disney world because their attendance was at 2 % in the year 2018. It was able to draw close to 51 million people to their services.

The European theme park industry comprises countries like United States, Britain, Japan, and China. The theme parks host millions of visitors annually (D & J International Consulting & Morisetti Associates, 2014). For instance, in 2018, the European theme parks approximately received 66 million visitors (Papamichael,2019).

Many tourists visit theme parks with expectations that they will enjoy the visit with delight and pleasure. Positive emotions and experience relate to customer satisfaction, which influences them to visit the place another time, increasing the customer rate of return

Increasing the demand for amusement parks has led to high development with new entertainment facilities and extending their services within catering and accommodation (Milman et al.,2010). Once there is the increase, it can lead to the possibility of competition among service providers in the business. This industry is about pleasing and fulfilling the needs of customers, so it is essential to look into the customer satisfaction and study how certain theme park. As for this case, Dino Parc Rasnov handle and optimize its use to develop the management of the park that will lead to profitability.

However, the increased popularity of the park has led to the emergence of several challenges. The major challenge is high expectations levels from the customers. Consequently, it becomes difficult to meet the high customer satisfaction expectations. With the challenges like overpopulation, most customers will end up being distressed. Once customers get distressed at the amusement and theme parks, they will be highly dissatisfied with services provided. Hence, dissatisfaction will result in low sales and a decreasing number of visitors, which will lead to poor performance. In every occasion, customer dissatisfaction can lead to the company having poor sales due to the factor of losing customers. The solution to this challenge is effective optimization of customer satisfaction techniques hence a higher return rate of customers to the theme parks. Another positive of customer satisfaction is short- and long-term growth of the theme park sales.

1.2 Purpose of the study

The purpose of this thesis is to identify some of the major determinants that influence satisfaction and will therefore present how management of Dino Parc can optimize these factors in order to improve the experience and increase the rate of return. All these helps in finding out how a newly established theme park handles and optimizes customer satisfaction within Dino Parc. The destination Romania, Rasnov, was chosen as an ideal theme park given its convenience in terms of data availability and primary information access, which are crucial for analyzing factors of interest, such as the corresponding measurement of satisfaction. Dino parc is chosen because its management provide a good example of how customer satisfaction is essential in the growth of the company.

Dino Parc was established in June 2015. It is also the only theme park of dinosaurs and the largest in Southeast Europe. Over the first two years of operation, about 700,0000 visitors visited the park. Since Dino Parc is a young park, it is suitable for studying the factors influencing customer satisfaction in the theme park industry.1.3 Analytical approach

To fully understand the topic, this thesis is going to show information based on existing literature. First, the thesis is going to introduce theme parks and its characteristics, the history and overview of the theme park industry of today. In the next part, customer satisfaction, theories related to customer satisfaction and its measurement will be highlighted. Moreover, this thesis will show how customer feedback is connected to customer satisfaction and present the influencing factors of customer satisfaction and its optimization. Furthermore, the European theme park industry will be highlighted

The primary research involves the collection of first-hand information through interviews with different managers and supervisor of the park. The aim is to determine whether the issues explained in the literature are aligned with the current situations in Dino Parc. Moreover, the interviews will help to determine whether the theme parks have their strategies to handle and optimize customer satisfaction to improve the quality of services. With the obtained information from the interviews, further processing will be done to obtain clean, reliable, and applicable information for the industry of theme parks and specifically the Dino Parc

2 Literature review

2.1 Theme Parks and its characteristics

A theme park is an outdoor attraction site that can combine rides and shows that are designed around a central theme, and they are also charges in terms of pay-one-price fees for admission to the visitors (Goulding,2003). The theme park is part of the global attraction industry (Milman, 2010). The occupied space for the theme park must be huge, given that it involves outdoor and entertainment innovativeness. The industry has a long history, which is traced to 19th-century pleasure grounds, and as time passes, it was developed into a more sophisticated theme park with varieties of entertainment enterprises (Weinstein, 1996). Most people as define theme parks as places that people especially tourist, go ahead to have fun with the rest of their family and friends.

“Based on the above discussion, the key characteristics of a theme park emerge as including

(a) a specific theme that contrasts with everyday life,

(b) providing enjoyable visual spectacle,

(c) live performances,

(d) utilization of modern technologies,

(e) the incorporation of exciting rides,

(f) providing refreshment facilities presented in ways consistent with the theme,

(g) is specifically designed with reference to considerations of sight lines, visitor flow, and has sufficient space to enclose the visitor in a spatial capsule divorced from the outside world, and

(h) which must be financially viable to permit the continued re-investment required by the park to develop new features and perhaps replace the old as they become dated‘.

As an aside it can be noted that some of these features are copied by other types of institutions such as outdoor museums that seek to educate the visitor by replication of past life styles. The previous section offered different definitions of a theme park‘, from which it is clear that a theme park is a place with a particular theme‘. Therefore, all the facilities, buildings and sceneries must be consistent with this theme ‘. Hence to summarise from these definitions, a theme park must contain the following characteristics. Additionally, Brown et al. (2001) argued that all the attractions in the park are composed of five main types: the shows, restaurants, shops, games, and rides. Another characteristic is that most of the visitors mainly go to the rides first upon arriving at the park before engaging in other recreational activities that are available at the theme parks (Brown et al.,2001). According to Mill (1990) the following characteristics match the concept of modern theme parks: technological fantasy, unique buildings, educational purpose theme, displays, catering, side-shows and pleasant ambiance, it showed that it had a unique feature.

2.1.1 History of the theme park industry

The theme parks’ thrills are often obscured from the outside by landscaping. They are hence kept clean, and the new ride is frequently added to ensure people are kept to come back to the parks regularly. Historically, the first theme packs emerged in the year 1946. This happened at a place called Santa Claus. It was the followed by Santa’s workshop in 1949 and them Disneyland in 1955. All these were proper inspirations for people to design more theme parks and make it a proper thriving business.

2.1.2 The theme park industry of today

The use of a stronger brand to create a sense of place can provide the special sensation of being taken to a fantastic destination. In many parks, this fantastic destination comes from an immersive environment, mainly achieved by securing a high level of I.P. (Johnson,2004). An I. P is an intellectual property which entails the creative moods of a mind to design new products. It is from this point that many people design how they will improve the state of their companies and businesses.

2.1.2.1 Amusement parks vs the theme parks

Amusement parks and theme parks are forms of recreational facilities that are located in various parts of the globe. Amusement parks are facilities with equipment that facilitate outdoor recreational activities like rides, games and shows. On the other hand, theme parks are similar to amusement parks, only that their recreational activities are aligned to a specific theme. All the equipment in a theme park must reflect a particular topic that maybe be the sea, Disney and dinosaurs, among others. Seemingly, amusement parks may have several themes and even contrasting themes being showcased (Krase, 2019). In other words, the main difference between theme parks and amusement parks is that theme parks have a central idea and are arranged to express a particular distinctive story. The main features that distinguish theme parks from amusement parks is the admission price for the customers. How they charge heir customers is also differentiated from the amusement parks because it is always different. Apart from that, theme parks is that they are mostly artificially created and need very expensive capital investments to make the business to be successful.

2.1.2.2 Effect of Globalization on the Industry

Globalization is a modern change in the world, mainly attributed to changes in technology that have resulted in more integration among countries. It is seen as a common aspect that helps in characterization of the present state of the economy of the world. most see this as uniformity but on a true thought it brings diversification of the economy.

2.1.2.3 Digitalization

Digitalization refers to the usage of digital technologies that result in changes in business models, creating new revenue avenues, and more opportunities for value production. The technology was advancing at a high pace and changed the whole theme park industry.