Climate Change & Uncertainty: Taking Action

The main companies in the sector operating in Europe met last week at the annual congress organized by IAAPA, the International Industry Employers, at the Fira de Barcelona. The event received about 16,000 visitors and was exhibited by about 700 companies, according to the organizers.

As usual in this type of congress, companies passed on a message of optimism that, in this case, was supported by facts. Some of the largest companies announced new park attractions or openings, and managers generally were satisfied with how the sector is moving forward in recent years, when the entire leisure industry had to recover from the heavy three -year pandemic, confinement and tourism underground.

The good prospects in the sector are not tight and there are some questions for how the business will evolve. In this sense, by 2025 it has been a more complicated year than the previous ones. Among the fears of the sectors are, above all, the evolution of the economy and the growing uncertainty on a global scale. “Donald Trump is not helping much, agitation is not normal,” Zamperla said at a round table during the Congress of Iaata.

The geopolitical tensions and the slow rhythm of growth of the great European economies – Germany, the locomotive of the continent, has been in almost three years – make growth lower and thus the salaries and work safety of families suffer. This means that at times of uncertainty, people think more about spending the money in leisure parks.

Despite the fears of the industry, there are exceptions. One of these is the Catalan PortAventura World. “The most difficult years have been the last,” said its CEO, Fernando Aldecoa, who emphasized that this 2025 has been “really good, especially for the water park”. In this regard, in PortAventura the help of having a fairly diversified model, as it combines pure tourism (with a dozen hotels) and three different parks: the original PortAventura, a water park and the most recent, Ferrari Land, which makes it the second leisure complex in Europe, only surpassed by Disney in Paris.

The danger of climate change

From the outside, the leisure park business may seem to be based on attractions, be it slides with swimming pools, Russian mountains or video game machines, but the reality is different: on average, 50% of the income of the parks comes from the restoration, according to sector data, although it varies greatly depending on the country. “In Germany or in the Netherlands it is impossible not to offer food, while in southern France there is no problem selling only soft drinks,” said Edouard Malnoy, Delgat de Hadrenra counselor, a French multinational founded in 2021 who manages leisure parks. indoor –That is, they are not outdoors – in various countries, including Spain.

“The location is key, because the market is becoming more competitive, and there are stronger companies,” added Malnoy. In this regard, then, the region of the world in which a park is located can greatly mark its future success, especially due to the effects of climate change on customer consumption habits. As reported Bloomberg In July, with the warm heat wave that affected much of the United States last spring, 9.6% fell the influx of audiences to the country’s theme parks, but according to Six Flags, the worldwide giant in the sector, the decline exceeded 17%. It was just too hot to spend the day walking around a park.

PortAventura’s highest executive emphasized that climate change is one of the most important elements. In the case of the Catalan Park, it should be borne in mind that it is on the Mediterranean coast, which is one of the regions of Europe where experts expect global warming to affect more seriously, especially in terms of increases in temperatures and modifications of rain patterns.

According to Zamperla, two of the ingredients for the industry to prosper “peace and good weather”, which explains the concerns in a time of conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, commercial and diplomatic tensions and an increasingly mad climate.

The AI ​​awakens little enthusiasm

Another element that the sector takes into account for the immediate future is artificial intelligence. Despite the emergence of the AI ​​in many areas of the technological sector, at the moment the amusement parks have not yet integrated it widely and, when done, it has been in the field of business and management, not as part of attractions or as elements that directly affect the experience of the visitors of the parks: “ For now, it has little presence when it comes to building activities, ” says Malnoy, who also says Malnoy, In the “back part” of the business, such as “finances or analyzes”.

According to Zamberla, his company has adopted the AI, especially for “predicting the maintenance” of the attractions he designs at a time when “finding staff for maintenance is a problem.” Thus, the Italian director provides for the sector to move towards “predictive attractions” whose maintenance is adapted to what is needed at all times, but his company does not use it in the development of new attractions.

However, Aldecoa said that the AI ​​is already “part of the culture” of companies, because it is “embedded in the day -to -day” business. However, PortAventura World also does not have, for the moment, any attraction in which the AI ​​is part of the user’s experience.

In fact, Zamperla admitted that technological changes can create disruptions in the business model of many companies in the sector, but at the same time emphasize that lifelong parks still have a long way to go. “Attractions are still a great success,” he said, no matter how much amusement designers seek to adapt to the emergence of new technologies.

In this regard, the delegated council of the Italian multinational provides for changes in the coming decades, especially to make the most “interactive” and “immersive” attractions for visitors (in Catalonia, Zamperla designed Virtual Express, a roller coaster with virtual reality in Tibidabo in Barcelona). “Children today interact with screens” from an early age, he recalled, which will force companies to move forward along this path, which does not see badly: “Interactivity can unite families, it is an area where it can be inclusive,” he adds.

And the casinos?

With all this, the IAPA Congress in Barcelona gathered companies in the leisure park sector, which includes amusement, aquatic, theme and recreational parks. What was not, however, were companies in the game sector, such as Casinos. Among the manufacturers, there were recreational machines – the games of centersarcade-, but not slot.

Therefore, in this atmosphere, projects such as those of the Hard Rock on the grounds of the Vila-seca and Salou recreational and tourist center did not even appear in the conversations. Asked about the immediate future of the park, the CEO of PortAventura did not mention at any time the possibility that Hard Rock will end up being a reality. Although it is true that Hard Rock and PortAventura are totally different companies and, therefore, CEOs must be caught when talking about other companies, Aldecoa said that the growth of the Catalan park goes through “more hotels and more attractions”.

He was also “interested in entertainment” in the park and more specifically in the shows offered, focused on a clearly family audience. “Quality entertainment is key” for the future, Zamperla added.

However, among the new hotels he plans to open, Aldecoa proposed in March in an interview with the Diari de Tarragona The possibility that one of the hotels in the Hard Rock game complex is in the hands of PortAventura. The CEO of the Catalan Theme Park has been publicly favorable to the construction of the Macrocasino in Salou because – opin – it would help to seasonalize the tourism of the municipality. In fact, the Costa Dorada still has a strong dependence on the summer months, despite the park’s efforts to expand the season with offers campaigns during the fall (with Halloween) and Christmas holidays.