The leisure park market - Spain

Amusement parks are designed to welcome a public, often families, for a day's or weekend's entertainment. Worldwide, the amusement park market was recording strong growth rates before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, which had a deleterious effect on the global market. Drastically reduced travel and social distancing measures led to a historic drop in theme park activity worldwide. The world's largest theme parks, such as Magic Kingdom Theme Park (Florida), Disneyland Park (California), Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disneysea, all experienced difficult years, as did smaller parks. In Spain, the theme park market benefited from the general rise in tourism spending in the peninsula, and the destination's growing appeal in recent years. Indeed, before the advent of covid-19, Spain was the leading destination for international tourists, with a record number of foreign visitors. National parks such as Parc Warner (Madrid), Siam Parc (Santa Cruz de Tenerife) and PortAventura (Salou) were posting double-digit increases in visitor numbers until 2019. following the sudden halt caused by the pandemic, the parks had to modify their programming and adapt to health constraints. Attendance was buoyed by rising domestic demand and the easing of sanitary constraints, even if the level of activity remains down on 2019. Alongside the large-scale amusement park segment, indoor playgroundsindoor playgrounds are booming. Requiring much lower initial investment, they are expanding rapidly in the form of franchises, offering activities such as bowling, go-karting, laser games and escape games.