Of Paramount Importance: Theme parks

Paramount Pictures needs little introduction. From the early Marx Brothers output to the more modern-day likes of "Star Trek", Paramount has been one of Hollywood's most famous studios. It is, in marketing parlance, a highly recognisable brand and, as with other brands, its value can be exploited in ways other than the cinema and media.

The Walt Disney Company was probably the first studio to truly appreciate branding potential. And boy did it appreciate it. Arguably, Disney is now better known for its theme parks than for Mickey Mouse, and theme parks have become an important additional line of business for other studios. Universal is one. It used to own most of the shares in the PortAventura theme park in Salou but sold out in 2004. Now, there is another studio coming to Spain with a theme park - Paramount.

The move into resorts and theme parks is a recent venture by Paramount. Its first resort is being built in Dubai but it may be a close-run thing as to where the first one becomes operable. Paramount Murcia is scheduled to be completed some time in 2015, the same year as the Dubai project.

Alhama in the region of Murcia has a population of a little over 20,000 people. It is a town noted for nature parks and protected natural areas. Its economy is based primarily on agriculture and industry. There is a tourism economy, but this is confined to those natural areas. It is some way inland in a region that is not that well known for its sun and beach tourism. Murcia obviously has a coast but it doesn't have resorts of the type which are to be found in the Alicante province to its north and along the Costa Almeria and therefore Costa del Sol to its south.

When the Paramount project was first announced in 2010, concerns were raised that it was just some sort of publicity stunt that wouldn't see the light of day. Interestingly, despite the location and all that nature, there was surprisingly little opposition. Naturally it has caused some controversy, but the benefits seem to outweigh this. Leading unions have, for example, accepted that it would be a great opportunity for Murcia.

It was fair though for some scepticism to have been expressed. At the time of the initial announcement, the Gran Scala project in Aragon was still seen as a goer, but it was to soon collapse through a mixture of co-ordinated opposition and, more importantly, a lack of investors.

Investment for Paramount Murcia - Paramount Park and Lifestyle Center to give it its official name - hasn't yet been put in place totally. The promoters behind the park is a company called Premursa (Proyectos Emblemáticos Murcianos), which is made up by the institute of development in Murcia, the Murcia Tourist Region body and Santa Monica Financial Services. The whole project is expected to need investment of 450 million euros. Premursa expects to get this investment mainly from foreign sources. In the meantime, the first phase is to start now that Ferrovial, a company which is known of course for its airports, has been awarded a contract worth 52 million euros.

The schedule for completion in 2015 does therefore seem a little tight for what will be a project occupying 133 hectares that will combine Paramount theming with the lifestyle of casino, hotels, restaurants, shopping mall and culture and which will be notable for utilising advanced technologies, including 3D and 4D. And the schedule might be even more optimistic if all the investment doesn't pour in. The hope is that now that Spain is seemingly being seen as a good investment opportunity it will.

But there are concerns about theme park viability in general. The Murcia minister for tourism has sought to dispel these concerns, pointing to, for example, a 1.8% growth for Spanish theme parks in 2012 as well as to the unique features of Paramount Park. If it all comes off, the theme park is expected to create 23,000 jobs and attract some three million tourists per annum. And if it does indeed all come off, then it will be a theme park on the Spanish mainland of the type which Mallorca does not have.

Murcia makes a great deal of sense as a location because it is a region that is crying out for tourism investment. But just as regions which are deficient in tourism terms need investment so also do those which have been heavily invested in, such as Mallorca. Constant new investment is required in order to create new attractions and so keep up in the tourism competition race.

Theme parks, so we have been led to believe by the Balearics tourism ministry, are on the cards. If so, then where is the evidence? And even if there were evidence, 133 hectares in an area of nature parks as in Murcia? Forget it. It would never happen.

* Photo from the Premursa website.

Waiter, There's Some Soup In My Lap

I became acquainted with Magnus Pyke during my shortlived career as a waiter. You must all remember the good Pyke, the mad television scientist who was prone to flailing his arms around erratically and with great enthusiasm. 

To be strictly accurate, my first acquaintance with Pyke was not with him as such but with one of his wayward arms. He was the Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and during one summer break, the association held its annual conference at my university. Which is where the career as a waiter comes into the story, as also does Magnus Pyke's arm.

Had I thought that his arm-waving was anything more than a characteristic with which to give him increased television recognition, I would probably have avoided his table and left the serving duties to some other sucker. Alas, as I was to discover, Pyke's arms windmilled in real life to a similar extent as they did on the telly.

If I tell you that my acquaintance with Magnus Pyke involved his whirling appendages, a tray with a bowl of soup (mercifully not that hot) and a lady with a long blue dress who was next to him, then you can probably guess where this story is heading. Put it this way, the soup did not head in the direction that it should have done and in the manner it should have done: onto the table and still in the bowl.

There was of course a frightful commotion and even greater amounts of arms being waved. It was at this point that Magnus Pyke elevated himself into hero status in my estimation. He took full and total responsibility for the incident, absolved me completely and even went so far as to invite me to some special function (drinks included) at which I made sure I was some distance from him.

Anyway, that's my Magnus Pyke story, and you are probably wondering what it has to do with anything. Well, the anything is the role of the waiter in modern tourism society. Discuss.

Waiters (and waitresses for that matter) come in different guises, be they serving in establishments as diverse as the Brit bar, the pizzeria-grill-international restaurant, the pretentious-cuisine restaurant or the hotel. But regardless of the type of establishment, the waiter is the same. He is a mobile ordering, delivery and recycling system. This is basically all he is. Under the old ASME symbol scheme for depicting processes in a work system, his functions would primarily be denoted by the arrow for transportation: from kitchen to table and back again.

Given this elementary process, why do bars and restaurants bother with humans? Robots could surely do waiters' jobs just as effectively, so long as they weren't of the "Lost In Space" robot variety (a Class M-3 Model B9) and could outdo Magnus Pyke in the arm-waving stakes. "Warning, warning, stupid customer at table eight!"

Attractive as robot waiters might seem, they wouldn't be blessed with especially good interactive communication skills, save for being able to input the order command and then regurgitate it by way of confirmation. "One. Steak. Well. Done. With. Chips. No. Salad." And it is really this, the communication, which distinguishes, or should, the human from the robot waiter, along with certain other characteristics, such as personality. The waiter is, to use business-speak, at the front line of the customer encounter, or customer interface, if you really must. It is why the waiter is, therefore, a crucial part of not only a restaurant's business but the whole tourism experience.

In the Murcian town of Los Alcázares, the town hall has come up with a course for waiters. It is entitled "The waiter: an important tourist agent". The course comprises four modules, one of which is "tourist sensibility", which means something along the lines of understanding the tourist.

You would think, or I would, that working as a waiter in a tourist area, a waiter would have such a sensibility, but this isn't always the case. Far from it. But there are plenty of waiters as well as bar and restaurant owners who do possess this sensibility. For some, it has been acquired through years of experience. For others, and this is surely the key to a good waiter and/or bar owner, it just comes naturally. It shouldn't really require training.

Yet even the good waiter, the one to whom serving, communicating, being pleasant, chatty, interested, helpful and so on all come without a second thought, can be undone by the unexpected. If a tourist with wild, flailing arms comes into the bar, just watch out.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.