Abstract. Every year thousands of individuals and organizations think about developing new visitor attractions. Only a minority of these proposed attractions will ever be built. Most will never be developed for a number of reasons, including funding problems, unfavorable feasibility studies or the lack of a suitable site. Furthermore, many new attractions never take off and either close prematurely or merely survive from year to year. Others achieve early success and then decline due to a lack of investment, visitor management problems or the failure to respond to changes in market demand. Only relatively few attractions achieve constant success over a long period of time. Experience suggests that while nothing guarantees success, there are a number of factors which contribute to the success of visitor attractions.
The organization and its resourcesThe chances of developing a successful new visitor attraction are greatly enhanced if the organization has experience of developing and managing attractions [1][2][3][4]. It will be aware of the opportunities and pitfalls, and will be able to take account of the lessons it has learned from its previous experience. However, the early years of Disneyland Paris show that even experienced, successful attraction operators can make some errors of judgment. An organization with previous experience will also probably have a human resource team that will have the skills and knowledge to develop a new attraction successfully. The most important type of resource, however, and the one which is crucial to successful attraction development, is financial resources. Visitor attractions are very expensive to build and run, and those that are successful tend to be developed by organizations with substantial financial resources. The capital cost of developing attractions varies from less than £1 million for a craft cent re or small museum to several billion pounds for a project such as Disneyland Paris. Indeed Disneyland Paris is, together with the Channel Tunnel, probably the largest and most expensive construction project of the age in Europe, and perhaps in the world. As well as the cost of site acquisition and building work, much of the cost comes from fitting out the attraction with expensive museum artifacts or the installation of sophisticated modern technology like lasers and virtual reality experiences. Well-used attractions and those in rapidly changing markets (most of them) also need regular refurbishment, relaunching and remodeling to encourage repeat visits and to keep up with changes in consumer tastes. This is a continuous process that requires investment at frequent intervals. For example, theme parks often believe they need to offer a major new ride every year and these rides often cost over £1 million each.Attractions also need the financial resources to allow them to provide high-quality facilities and services. Organizations which are short of money often reduce levels of facilities and services and this often leads to a poorer product and, ultimately, fewer visitor...