SUMMER 2020: WHAT WE’VE LEARNED Despite the stress and reduced capacity brought on by the pandemic, adventure park operators found a lot of silver linings during this summer season. By Peter Oliver
When clocks were pushed forward in March of this year, it seemed as if the world skipped over daylight savings and jumped right into the Twilight Zone. In the early spring days of the pandemic, many park operators no doubt envisioned the upcoming summer season as a dystopia right out of the Rod Serling playbook, with customers and staff needing to engage in all sorts of convoluted behavior to avoid the infective scourge of the pandemic. Business would be restricted at best, and possibly shut down.
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To be sure, business as usual was not the order of the day in the summer of 2020. Yet after pre-summer anticipation of a possible onslaught of misery and red ink, many parks were, perhaps surprisingly, able to run relatively smoothly, successfully, and even profitably. That, at least, was the scenario painted by a select panel of park owners and operators in an Adventure Park Insider Huddle conducted in early September, “The Good, the Bad, and What We’ve Learned” (Episode 47 on the PodSAM list).
HOW BAD COULD IT BE?
Destination decline. Start with the Bad first. Parks hit hardest by the impositions of the pandemic were those whose customer base comprises primarily destination travelers, as air-travel-reliant destinations declined precipitously. Nick Thompson, owner of ClimbWorks, which operates parks in
the Southeast U.S. and Hawaii, reported a 70 percent drop in visitation at the Hawaiian location. With Hawaii closed to outside visitors, the park slashed prices and relied on local traffic to (hopefully) meet a baseline of financial viability. Thompson conceded that the whole idea of making money had basically been tossed out the window. “We weren’t trying to make a profit, but just trying to take care of our support team,” he said, in an effort to retain valuable talent for future operations. Staff shortages. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for park operators as they slowly began opening in spring was staff retention. Generous unemployment benefits, said Rachel Maestri-Hailey of Zoar Outdoor in Massachusetts, discouraged some staff from returning. “We were starting with fewer guys than we had originally counted on ... We’ve been chasing the staffing a little bit this season.” Lori Pingle, owner of ZipZone Outdoor Adventures in Columbus, Ohio, had a similar experience. In a typical year, ZipZone might expect about 80 percent of the park’s staff to return from one year to the next. Not so in 2020. Pingle said that of the 14 staff members who agreed in March to return for the summer, just four were still on board by the middle of May. One reason for the decline, she said, might have been that people for whom working at the park was a second job “didn’t want two
exposures.” Whatever the reason, the bottom line was that “staffing has been extremely challenging,” with Pingle herself filling in from time to time and staff training being an ongoing process throughout the summer. “It’s just been endless frustration,” Pingle said. Managing the mask mandate. Finally, there were initial issues with customer acceptance of new protocols either imposed voluntarily by park operators or mandated by state or local authorities. Upon opening in the spring, said Kurt Damron, CEO of Highlands Aerial Park in North Carolina, “no one showed up wearing a mask.” That presented a “delicate situation” in trying to con-
Communication with guests about rules and restrictions was daunting at first, but became easier as attitudes and expectations evolved. Shown here: Zoar Outdoor signage.