From 2008 to 2018, water parks across the country sprung up like mushrooms, and the construction of water parks has maintained a rapid development trend. But at the same time of rapid development, the problems existing in the water park have also emerged. Poor profitability and losses are the main problems at this stage, which have seriously affected the healthy development of the water park industry.

So why are water parks losing money? The following aspects can be roughly summarized:

1. Not respecting the laws of the market and not knowing how to control the scale of investment. Many investors are building water parks with loans, coupled with excessive superstition on imported equipment, resulting in high capital costs.

2. There is no professional operation intervention, a lack of comprehensive understanding of the seasonal operation of the water park, climate conditions and other characteristics, leading to blind optimism.

3. Be fooled. Consulting and planning are not loyal and exaggerate the total number of people covered by the market. Market positioning and pricing are inaccurate, expectations are often too high, and the market responds coldly, resulting in an imbalance in the input-output ratio.

4. Climatic conditions limit the number of effective operating days. The effective operating days in a year are only about 2 months. Therefore, the operation of the water park must be carefully calculated. Once the operating strategy does not get market support, it is likely to affect the annual operating income.

5. Under the impact of diversified entertainment factors, the number of young main consumer groups has decreased, and the market has been ruthlessly diverted.

6. The safety management of some water parks is not in place, and major safety accidents occurred, and they were ordered to suspend business for rectification.

To sum up, the success of the water park is definitely not achieved overnight, involving all aspects of details. We start from the three aspects of planning, operation and management of the water park.

Planning stage: don’t be blindly optimistic, the more detailed the plan, the better

Strictly control planning and design, equipment selection, project construction, theme packaging, function setting, material support, team formation, and park performances. Be able to analyze rationally during planning, avoid unnecessary investment, and grasp the scale of investment recovery; in terms of equipment selection, avoid similar equipment and configure equipment that tourists like; in engineering construction, control the quality of materials and supervise construction quality; In terms of theme packaging, knowing the preferences of young people can not only be innovative but also control the investment scale; in terms of function setting, it can not only meet the needs of tourists but also implement the service concept into various functions.

Operation stage: identify the target and make efforts both online and offline

In addition to traditional offline channels, we must also pay attention to the establishment of online channels. For example, cooperate with the OTA platform, such as building an official WeChat mall of the water park, and tourists can directly purchase tickets or purchase products around the park through the mall. At the same time, the park’s WeChat mall can also serve as the “face” of the park, shaping the park’s brand image through carousel images, page design, and park information consultation and push. From time to time, the park launches small marketing games such as Jiugongge, Big Turntable, and Instant Scale in the mall from time to time to attract tourists to continue to spend.

Management stage: no matter how big or small, safety is more important than everything else

Many park purchasers pay too much attention to the price when purchasing supporting products and ignore the quality of the equipment. Some park managers fail to discover the defects of safety management details in time and fail to give early warning in time. This is all wrong, only considering the short-term interests of the park, ignoring the long-term development. Water parks should standardize the management of employees, equipment, and recreational activities. In addition, we recommend that the water park open a scientific park management system background, which can not only collect omnichannel data statistics reports at a glance, but also set employee and equipment permissions to assist in all-around management of the park.

I believe that a boutique park built with the spirit of craftsmanship and that can make tourists feel happy will be what the new generation of water parks should look like.