Wonder La, the amusement park in Bidadi on the outskirts of Bangalore promoted by the Rs 320 crore Kochi-based V-Guard group, is gung-ho about the business even in this economic slowdown. On the other hand, in the West, theme parks have been seeing a fall in the number of visitors.
The group expects a turnover of Rs 32 crore this fiscal from the theme park. Over the past three years from when the park was commissioned, it has seen over 2.3 million visitors.
The amusement park has been seeing a few changes in the profile of visitors to the park. Corporates are increasingly using the amusement park for corporate retreats and offsite trainings.
These include business from MICE (meetings, incentives, conference and entertainment) teams. Till the slowdown hit, many firms used to take their staff abroad as part of their MICE. Now, with the slowdown hitting every other firm, Wonder La hopes to draw the business from MICE from firms that conduct corporate tours for its employees, often held as part of employee development plan. In addition to corporates, Wonder La is also looking to catch the eye of many more educational institutions. In order to attract them, it also offers discounts of up to 50 per cent.
With 80 per cent of the visitors today being from Bangalore, the group is now looking to attract more visitors from outside the state. It now wants to reverse this ratio.
Interestingly, the theme park hopes that this year will be a good one for it, contrary to normal belief that people would shun theme parks during a slowdown. This year, the theme park hopes to attract more domestic tourists, a good number from the neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala. According to P G R Prasad, chairman, V-Guard Industries, “Many of the domestic tourists who earlier visited theme parks in South East Asia now find this a cheaper option.”
The domestic tourists have not stopped coming and this is the group Wonder La is banking on. The park can handle upto 10,000 visitors at any given time. During some holidays it has seen about 8,000 visitors and on a bad day it has about 2,500 visitors.
