Not every mega tourism venture becomes the world’s next popular place to visit, and many of them experience failure after much ton on money and effort have been put into a spectacular opening and boasting great things only to have empty lots to park in, gates locked, and weeds are seen growing up between cracks of asphalt, concrete and so forth.
So why does this happen? Usually, these failed mega projects had a good idea but the idea failed miserably because the real world did not respond in the way that was hoped for and all of the hype that came with it. In addition to that, bad planning, poor management, bad timing and financial issues etc… In the end, if you set your expectations too high, you’re going to fall and it’s going to feel like a much bigger fall.
Tourism has always attracted daring ideas. Cities and developers always want to create something iconic, like a ski resort or mall or fantasy castle theme park. The formula is simple, build large with lots of advertising and wait for people to show up. However, history shows that having a large scale and high ambitions doesn’t guarantee you’re going to succeed.
A good example of this is the Alps ski resort in South Korea. They started in the 80’s as a pioneer in winter sports and at that time it was more than just another ski area. This resort was among the first significant winter destinations in South Korea. Thousands of tourists came to the Alps every year during the height of its operation and it was for many years an unstoppable location for winter tourism.
Newer ski lifts and more modern resorts with luxurious accommodations began to take away customers slowly from the business. By the year of 2006, the ski area was closed indefinitely. Now there is nothing left but old, decaying hotels and ski equipment sitting in storage. What should have been a winter paradise is now frozen in time.
If you think retail is a safer than skiing and snowboarding, think again.
The South China Mall was once hailed as the largest mall in the world when it opened its doors in 2005 with an impressive 465,000 square meters of space for over 2000 stores; however, in real life, the mall was nothing more than a bunch of empty hallways.
The biggest problem this mall faced was not the amount of space it had, but the way it attracted customers. The South China mall had a serious problem with its infrastructure (e.g., not being located near sufficient other businesses or having good parking) and did not have a very good traffic pattern from surrounding areas. After adding entertainment areas to the mall, it was still a ghost town. Big buildings do not mean large numbers of customers.
Wonderland Amusement Park was supposed to be the largest Disneyland-style amusement park in Asia, with an estimated area of 120 hectares and featuring whimsical castles, fairy tale towers and a magical world only 20 km outside of Beijing, but due to disagreements about money and land issues, it was never built, leaving children with nothing but their imaginations.
Unlike amusement rides and laughter; this area gained notoriety for its ghostly, half finished castles on an abandoned piece of farmland. In 2013, this area was completely razed. Sometimes your dreams come crashing down right after they have opened their gates.
Germany has a similar theme park tragedy – Spreepark; Originally opened in 1969 as VEB Kulturpark Planterwald, Spreepark was the only amusement park in east Germany, attracting around 1.7 million visitors each year. Those are significant numbers.
However, it wasn’t just a drop of admission numbers, the dramatic down fall was due to the scandal which rocked the park, when the operator of the park was implicated in illegal activity, preventing the park from regenerating its image. Within just a few years of the scandal, attendance numbers plummeted and Spreepark closed its doors by the year 2002. Today the decaying rides and decaying ferris wheel mark the place where a very popular attraction can disappear in record time.
The Marble Arch Mound in London serves as an example of this theory; It was not an abandoned theme park or a massive shopping centre but an artificial hill constructed in the proximity of Marble Arch designed to offer a new green vista of Oxford Street and Hyde Park.
The project cost approximately $8,000,000. The concept sounded amazing — an urban mini-mountain in a city. However, people were not impressed and most visitors said that it did not have an appropriate price tag or meet expectations. Eventually, they took it down early in 2022. A very expensive lesson to learn!
When you have ambition and do not give proper planning you run into risk. The location is essential; management for the long run is extremely essential. Although hype can draw people in a manner that could potentially have people at least one or two times; hype cannot keep drawing people to a destination for many decades.
Many of these projects that failed have attracted visitors in another sense. Urban explorers, photographers, and curious tourists are now visiting these sites because they are abandoned properties. Many people who failed had an uncommon experience when these sites had gained notoriety.
Overall, size does not mean more for tourism. Flashiness does not mean more intelligence. In addition, you will not find the most memorable attractions that have been created through success but through failure.
