Boosting Resort Revenue in the Off-Season

It’s like clockwork: In the heat of summer, people flock to beach resorts located in warm climates. In the cooler months, guests hit the slopes, taking in winter scenes up north. For hoteliers, attracting guests off-peak is no easy task, hurting their bottom lines for significant periods of time. In the off-season, it can also be difficult to nab the all-important weekend visits that bring bursts of revenue on a regular basis. To fill these voids, some resorts are turning to a unique amenity to ramp up business: Indoor water parks.

Unless a hotelier runs a hotel in Disney World, they might feel that adding a water park for additional off-peak and weekend traffic might sound like an unnecessary and cumbersome undertaking. But Adam McIntyre, creative director of The Weber Group, a design-build company that dreams up and then constructs water parks, says he has seen clients reap huge benefits from investing in the family-oriented amenity.

“There is a definite uptick in weekend stays, especially when the amenities that get added are for a family demographic,” he says. “You’ll get the most bang for your buck when you’re casting that net.”
Entertainment for the whole family, McIntyre grants, can be a tough demographic to appease. “A 7-year-old and a 17-year-old have entirely different interests,” he admits. But with decades of experience that began in the amusement park business, The Weber Group has discovered that there is one unifying factor that can engage all ages for an extended period of time—water. With the promise of varied activities in the water, the company has found that resorts can easily market to guests during times they would usually avoid a getaway.

The Weber Group’s clients include, among many others, the Great Wolf Lodge portfolio and Camelback Mountain Resort in Tannersville, Pa. In April 2015, Camelback debuted Aquatopia Water Park, open for year-round use. “They said, ‘You know what? We really need a hotel and a water park to drive four seasons of revenue,’” McIntyre says. “If you’ve got a facility that is particularly seasonal, to be able to pick up not just the shoulder seasons but also the entire summer months makes a lot of sense. As ground costs go up, you need to figure out how to keep people on property and attract new visitors.”

Building upon off-peak and weekend business, McIntyre says there are additional opportunities to drive revenue through indoor water parks. The amenity, he says, can add excitement to the convention business, as leading with a water park package can encourage businesspeople to make a family trip out of a convention, extending their stay and number of visitors. And while hoteliers might cringe at the thought, water parks also open opportunities for day-pass revenue. It is not the kind of business that puts heads in beds, but it does drive retail business within the hotel, not to mention the boost it provides the food and beverage sector by keeping guests indoors instead of venturing out.

For hoteliers interested in pursuing such a unique amenity, McIntyre says making the project a group effort is key to its success. “We always insist that in initial meetings, there needs to be somebody from operations, maintenance, guest relations, construction, finance, and the like. Everybody has varying opinions here on how a project needs to come together, and some of those voices aren’t always heard,” he explains. After also taking the most important factor into consideration—the guests themselves—through a series of surveys for real-time feedback on ideas, McIntyre says the process from start to finish typically takes 12 to 15 months, depending on the project’s scale. From the pre-planning to the approvals process, he says some become discouraged by such a sizable expansion.
“But it’s worth sticking with,” he notes. “All these facilities we have worked on have become easier to market to the general population with the addition of a water park.”