This month we’ve had the chance to interview Lola Salgado, the Director of the Aquarama Waterpark.
We spoke to her regarding the park, about how they prepare for an intense season and how she sees the sector’s future.
“Aquarama was born in 1986, together with other waterparks in Spain. It opened with approximately 30,000 m², which has grown to around 45,000 m² today. We have had to adapt to the growth in demand from our public, mostly residents from Valencia and Castellon.
It was at the end of the 80s and materials, technology and processes were not the same as they are today, so there is always something to improve. But thanks to the efforts that we’ve made since the beginning for visitors to enjoy our park, we’ve kept on growing and overcoming obstacles.
As I previously mentioned, our clients are mainly locals, so we try and build loyalty through personal treatment and by offering them new experiences each year. We maintain contact even when the park is closed, so we use all media to communicate. On the Internet with social media, web, digital magazines, but we also carry out an important investment “offline”, through traditional media and exterior publicity.
We offer the usual attractions found in waterparks, but we have also chosen to differentiate ourselves with more unusual attractions such as the “Twin Twister”, the Whirlpool, The Devil’s Drop or our insignia ride the space launcher “Space Shot”…our most popular attraction.
Reducing a year’s work down to 3 months of operation brings its worries, as everything has to be 100% ok and failure-free for it all to work out well. This is why we are so careful about selecting our staff, which in peak-season is made up of 120 people. The economic outlook and especially the weather forecast are issues that also concern us, but over which we have no control.
Safety and maintenance take up most of our efforts in the day-to-day. We ensure our facilities are properly used and we have all the regulatory safety measures in place. Although we allocate most economic resources to personnel costs, maintenance also receives a significant and large portion.
We have all the usual services in the park, with the great advantage for our clients that they may enter the park with their own food and beverages and also benefit from our free car-park.
Our sector is highly sensitive to economic changes, however we are surviving a major crisis and even though it may worsen, we remain optimistic for the time being. The fact that our activity takes place during the summer is somewhat of a handicap, as the avidity of news that the media has during this period is often disproportionate, however we try to keep up and constantly renew ourselves, to continue being a safe and appealing park for visitors.”
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