LocoLanding weathers storm
Operating an amusement park in the age of COVID-19 comes with an extra layer of challenges to actually let the public enjoy the attractions.
“Often our staff are right in there helping the kids or adults, whether it’s helping people put their helmet on at the go-karts or get harnessed on the ropes course,” explained Diana Stirling, owner of LocoLanding Adventure Park in Penticton. “This is a business where it’s all about the experience.”
The park currently has five out of 10 attractions in operation: the mini-golf course, the go-kart track, monkey motion, bumper boats and the high-level ropes course.
“And I can’t see us opening any more than that,” Stirling said. “With every attraction we have opened we had to make sure we could sanitize every surface after each use.”
Taking things slowly this year, LocoLanding opened up one attraction at a time beginning with mini-golf in mid-May.
With the public travel advisories and restrictions that are in place, Stirling is finding that a higher rate of visitors are coming from British Columbia. She is also grateful to notice how many guests this year have been local to the Okanagan. But despite the bump in domestic visitors, Stirling says business is still down in the range of 75%.
“We’re seeing visitors, we’re just not seeing as many visitors,” she said. “Based on the trend of the first few days of summer, we should be tracking at about 50 per cent (of normal). I feel confident that we’ll probably be sitting there by the end of August.”
Had 2020 been a normal year, Loco Landing would have seen “a huge addition … an amazing attraction in the back of our park” that would have replaced four existing attractions.
“If things are back to the way they were preCOVID, we will be able to open it next year.”
Despite the challenges of operating a business at such limited capacity, Stirling was worried the gates at LocoLanding might not have opened at all in 2020. She remembers feeling “very scared” on March 15 when she realized the season was in jeopardy.
“Our entire livelihood is tied up in seasonal tourism businesses. … There’s not a single business plan that accounts for a 0% revenue projection for the year. We had no idea what we were doing, we began trying to pull back all our costs.”
Even upon realizing some of the season could be salvaged, Stirling was still unsure how many employees would be needed.
“We couldn’t promise them anything, we could only tell them, ‘We’re doing the best we possibly can to even open and if we do open we’ll make sure that we’re safely opening for you.’ But it’s hard to retain the staff when you don’t have any answers for them.”
In a normal season about 130 employees, most local teenagers, are needed to run LocoLanding. Stirling says it only needs about 50 staffers for this year, though she decided to hire 60. The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy “helped a lot.”