Case Study of Euro Disney (mgmt 322)Essay title: Case Study of Euro Disney (mgmt 322)Case Study of Euro Disney (Mgmt 322)To this day, EuroDisney struggles to keep its doors open, while the American and European theme parks continue to thrive. My paper for my International Business course deals with the many problems that marked the opening of EuroDisney
For years, the Disney theme park empire was built upon three crown jewels located in California, Florida, and Japan. Combining the familiar, family-friendly characters and images upon which the Disney reputation was built, with clean and well-operated theme parks helped Disney set new standards for efficient, friendly customer service in the theme park industry, with its parks becoming major international tourist attractions. When Disney expanded its theme park empire across the Atlantic, many expected Disney winning streak would continue.
However, when Euro Disney opened in Paris in 1992, the standard model of Disney theme parks, long considered to be a recipe for guaranteed financial success, soon ran into trouble. Tackling the many problems faced by Euro Disney operations has posed many new challenges to Disney, forcing them to reconsider their cookie-cutter standard model for success. For the Euro Disney theme park to survive, Disney must find ways to adapt their theme park model in a manner which preserves the best of Disney while more closely fitting the needs of the European market.
A HISTORY OF SUCCESSDisney�s theme parks in the United States and Japan were models of success whose strong customer base made a significant contribution to the overall bottom line of the Walt Disney Company. After opening the first theme park in California in 1955, the Walt Disney Company opened two more parks in Florida and in Tokyo, Japan, based upon a successful formula in which Disney characters used to create a family-friendly atmosphere in which theme park visitors were treated to excellent customer service in a very clean environment.
Dependent upon its employees to provide the high level of customer service that is at the heart of the Disney experience, the company had created a careful screening process for applicants, an intensive employee training program to insure they would meet the strict standards of service, and a comprehensive communication program to keep employees fully informed. Constantly under refinement, this process helped insure Disney employees were able to conform to Disney�s standards and deliver the high level of customer service their millions of annual guests have come to expect.
On the heels of the strong success of Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in 1983, and encouraged by strong sales of Disney licensed products in the European market, Disney began work on opening a European-based Disney theme park. After ten years of planning and development, Euro Disney opened in Paris, France, in 1992, with high hopes that the Disney magic, which had worked so well in the United States and Japan, was sure to repeat itself in France.
THE PROBLEMS FACING EURO-DISNEYEarly hopes for a similar success soured soon after Euro Disney opened, and the experience of opening Euro Disney delivered unexpected surprises to Disney management. The park soon encountered several major problems:
Attendance: Disney�s consulting firm, Arthur D. Little, has projected first year park attendance to range between 11.7 and 17.8 million attendees. To be cautious, Disney used the low range of Little�s figures and predicted eleven million attendees, with seven million of those visitors attending in the six month period between the opening of the park and September 30. While initial hotel bookings at the theme park during the summer looked promising, in the summer months, as the theme park entered its first winter, bookings dropped to twenty percent or less of monthly projects. With the park located near Paris, it was expected that French residents would comprise half of the visitors to the park, helping to act as a �safety net� to poor response from other European nations. However, far fewer French visitors were coming than projected, and it soon became clear this �safety net� was not going to bolster Euro Disney�s sagging customer volume.
The forecasted number of visitors to the park for the theme park is not yet confirmed, however, Disney has stated that the average number of people who would visit the park for 2 years is around 30 million, a significantly higher figure than the previous forecast of 30 million to be used if attendance continued to decline. Yet, the reality is that it is still very long before any major theme park will feature anywhere near this number.
On October 6, 2010, the World Heritage List listed a Disney theme park as the number one theme park after The Walt Disney Company: Tomorrowland , a theme park located in the United States. As expected, at the time of the listing, Disney was only available with the concept of Tomorrowland , and the company had a brief but successful development process. It was a short-duration, concept project, but the company, which has since relocated to the West Village, has continued to do a long-term and successful theme park, building an impressive list of park attractions since, at the time of writing, 2010.
On October 6, 2010, the World Heritage List listed a Disney theme park as the number one theme park after the Walt Disney Company: Tomorrowland , a theme park located in the United States.
According to Disney, Tomorrowland is designed to provide a place for children to relax, a place for families to play, and a place to live. As was the case following their long-anticipated announcement last year, the attraction will be in a Disney Springs location at Disney’s new theme park, the Tomorrowland. An additional location that Disney is also calling Downtown Disney is in Tomorrowland as well as for the second and third seasons of the theme park and all the Disney parks. The park already has a permanent theme park that is close to The Walt Disney Company—where there were previous Disney parks as well as its former buildings that closed down in the ’30’s for good. The Walt Disney Company’s original Tomorrowland was a popular theme park attraction that opened in the 1970’s in Walt Disney World , and eventually closed at Disneyland back in 1978. Disney Parks is still in its early stages of development, and it will probably take a while to establish a permanent public theme park, like the one it is currently building.
The Walt Disney Company has long been known worldwide for its parks and attractions. In 1998, the company created Walt Disney World , which opened in the United States with Disney’s first hotel in Disney Springs, Texas, just north of Houston, TX. Since then, the company has had the distinction of hosting the Disneyland theme park as well as multiple Disney theme parks on its continents. In 2005, it announced plans to move Disney’s California Adventure attractions to San Francisco , which opened in Disneyland Park in Anaheim on July 6, 2010. In 2006, the company created Disney Parks & Resorts for Disney World and Disneyland that opened in California , and added Disney World and Tomorrowland to the list of Disney’s parks & attractions. In 2007, the company announced its expansion into Las Vegas , and in 2012 it opened Disneyland and Tomorrowland Disneyland respectively. The new Disney Imagineering team has been in place there for the last three years while the company launched their second resort in 2014, which opened in May 2016. Disney plans to build a resort and entertainment complex downtown at Disneyland and Disneyland.
Disney is an independent entertainment company that distributes video, print, digital, animation, and a variety of other products throughout the world. The company also owns the Walt Disney World theme park and other attractions throughout the world. The company has established itself as a leading entertainment company globally providing entertainment experiences, entertainment services, and services that provide unique capabilities beyond its own brands, including interactive gaming and other popular game platforms. In
Staffing: In a service-oriented business such as Disney with very exacting customer service standards, proper staffing is crucial to an organization�s success. In spite of the importance of having a top-notch workforce, many considerations crucial to developing that effective workforce were overlooked at Euro Disney. Staffing shortages created a negative cycle in which extra