Niles: Is this the first in a new wave of theme park failures?

Is a Dubai theme park’s closure this month a one-off, or the first sign of a new round of failures in the global attractions industry?

Dubai Parks and Resorts this month announced the permanent closure of Bollywood Parks Dubai, one of the three parks that opened at that resort in late 2016. Themed to the Hindi film industry based in Mumbai, Bollywood Parks offered wonderful decorative touches, as well as a fun live-action stunt show and media-based motion-base and flying theater shows, with a new GCI wooden coaster seemingly ready to open soon.

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At first glance, Dubai ought to be a prime market for theme park development. UK-based research company Euromonitor ranked Dubai as the second-most visited city in the world last year, trailing only Paris. On paper, Bollywood also looks like a can’t-miss theme for a park. Movies long have provided the most compelling IP for themed attractions, and Bollywood films are wildly popular around the world. Put those together and a Bollywood-themed park in Dubai should have be an easy winner, right?

The late Disney Legend Harrison “Buzz” Price set an enduring standard for the industry by creating a model for feasibility that has helped parks around the world endure through business cycles that shutter many other companies. Yet Buzz’s system works because it demands that business leaders look deeper than top-level tourism numbers.

Set 40 miles from the Dubai’s main airport, Dubai Parks and Resorts stood far from other tourist attractions in the city. Unlike rival, air-conditioned attractions, Bollywood Parks was an outdoor theme park, leaving visitors baking in the Middle East’s searing heat for much of the year.

Perhaps investors thought that the park’s intended audience from South Asia would not mind the sun and the heat. But India is not a market where millions of people grew up with theme parks, unlike in the United States or Europe. And visitors to the United Arab Emirates from the West would rather go to indoor, air-conditioned parks with Hollywood themes.

Even though Bollywood Parks Dubai was inspired by India’s movie industry, it grew out of Southern California. Pasadena-based studio Mycotoo worked on much of the creative design for the park. It was good work that deserved a bigger audience.

While it is rare for theme parks to fail, that does happen. Southern California has seen the closure of Marineland in Palos Verdes and Busch Gardens Los Angeles in Van Nuys. But the closest U.S. example to Bollywood Parks’ flameout might be Hard Rock/Freestyle Music Park in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Despite that city’s popularity as a tourist destination, that park barely made it through two seasons before closing in 2009.

Bollywood Parks’ failure shows that a fun park with a solid theme in a popular tourist market does not guarantee success. You must find the right combination of theme, story, experience, location, market and pricing to win customers. That so many parks have gotten it right over the years should not blind anyone to the fact that it remains very possible to get this wrong.