Catch a Wave!



Today the trend of active development of water parks in Ukraine causes significant interest of both potential investors and construction companies. As the experts claim, soon every big city will have its own complex of water entertainments. 

And still, in opinion of Vladimir Sharlay, the President of Ukrainian Water Parks Association (AAU), the water parks in Ukraine are still an unfilled niche of the market. During high season all water parks are constantly filled with visitors, and it shows the enhanced demand for the water parks and water amusements services.
Water business

— For a lot of people it is habitual already to spend days off or vacation with children in a similar complex. The active vacation is gaining more and more popularity, while water parks are perfect place for civilized time spending, — says Irina Budyachenko, administrator of Koblevo water park. 
According to references of investors and owners of existing projects in Crimea, running of the water parks went beyond all the bold expectations: the properties return term make 3 to 5 years. And when it comes to the roofed complexes that are supposed for construction in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kiev and Lviv, their return term is expected not less than 7 – 8 years. This can be explained by more complicated engineering and construction works, as well as the necessity of heating of the water park during the winter period.
The builders say about “water parks boom” in Ukraine. The constructions are planned everywhere, and they are progressing rather fast: a pool of 1000 sq.m can be built within several months. Therefore experts forecast that in several years the total amount of large scale water parks in the country will at least be doubled. 
On the average the construction of a water park costs 1,5 million UAH. The equipment for water parks can cost 400 to 2000 $ per sq.m, and when it comes to unique amusement rides, the prices can make 20 to 30 thousands per sq.m.
Apart from the amusement rides the significant share in parks profit comes from accompanying services: catering, wellness, retail. Around 70% of the water park profit is received by cafes, fast food premises, solariums, massage rooms. To develop the infrastructure of the water park is a must, since the specialists assure: the projects of future are the large scale entertainment centers with retail and spa centers, cinemas, and the hotel construction will be a definite sure-fire solution. 
Types of water parks

The classification of water parks is still rather relative: the centers can be divided according to their location or construction standards.

Open water parks are mostly located in Crimea. Among them are “Goluboy Zaliv” (Blue Creek) in Simeiz, “Zurbagan” in Sevastopol, “Mindalnaya Rozha” (Almond Grove) in Alushta, water park in Koblevo, Odessa region. Usually such complexes occupy huge territories and consist of pools, either connected or not connected in between, and of course the high slides up to 25–30 m. Open space provides the freedom for imagination of the engineers creating the ambitious projects. The large children area secures safe and joyful recreation for kids.

Enclosed water parks are high technology properties. The vivid examples are “Limpopo” in Ternopol and “Posejdon” in Odessa. As considers Valeriy Tuzhik, the chief engineer of “Poseidon” water park, taking the decision about designing of an enclosed water park, the designer takes on huge responsibility. This is mainly caused by the high cost of project, and the high maintenance cost for the water park doesn’t leave a chance for a mistake while choosing the materials for the building frameworks and while taking decisions of the technical solutions of the engineering networks. 

The most rare type for Ukraine is the city water park, which is usually built in the area with developed infrastructure and near to the greenery areas. The obligatory condition for such property is the availability of access roads and car parking. These properties are usually rather compact and occupy territory of 2 ha on average. By the way Kiev which still has no water park will soon get it.

Suburban complexes are the format under which falls the majority of water parks. These complexes are intended for vacations and days off. As an example we can name Odessa complexes in retreat centers, mostly in Nikolaev direction. 

— When talking about our complex, the place was not chosen by chance, — says Irina Budyachenko. — First of all, Koblevo is a resort, and water park only adds to it. Secondly, it is rather difficult to find 4ha of land near Odessa for development of commercial property. And thirdly Koblevo has ideal climate: while it can be raining hard in the neighborhood, here will be drizzling only.

It is necessary to separately mention the water parks by the hotels. While abroad water parks as part of hotels and tourist complexes are common practice, it is still happening rarely with us. At the moment the opposite situation is taking place: water park tends to provide hotel rooms as additional service.
Market situation

In Ukraine at the moment there are a lot of new water parks, construction of which was performed according to well practiced scheme (majority are seasonal properties). And if now while developing a water park you have no difficulties in equipment obtaining and on designing and construction stages AAU provides their support, the first Ukrainian water parks were created ab initio. During construction of the first enclosed water park “Poseidon” (Odessa region) Ukrainian specialistswere invited who have participated in similar projects abroad.

— There were no analogues (even Moscow “Transvaal” was opened later), so we took as examples the projects of water parks in the neighboring countries. This was an original project, at least because one of “Poseidon” founders Vladimir Finko was an architect, and of course he was taking immediate participation in elaboration and designing of the building, — says a water park staff member.

Vladimir Sharlay states, that there are very few “weighty” specialists in water parks designing field, therefore the participation of the foreign specialists in organization of water parks in Ukraine is an essential necessity.
Prospects

In Vladimir Sharlay’s opinion, three main directions are the most perspective ones for water parks development in Ukraine. The first one is construction of water parks located in existing recreational centers in resort areas, both seaside and remote from the sea. The second one is designing and construction of open and enclosed water parks in big cities as part of large entertainment or recreational complexes. The third direction is creation of small water complexes in aqua areas, on the beaches, hotels, operating pools and even private houses.
As says the water park staff, there is no major competition in this niche at the moment. Every water park has its own customer. 

Reference
First water parks appeared around 25 – 30 years ago on tropical resorts of America and Asia and they were parks on the shore of the body of water. The experience of their running has showed that while the cost of an average water park makes 1,5-2 million $ and average duration of swimming season is 4 months, the return terms were making only 1,5-2 years. Such return is considered to be extremely high, therefore already at the end of 1980s - beginning of 1990s enclosed water parks started to appear in the northern latitudes. At the moment the water parks are available in all large European cities with population over 500 thousand inhabitants.
However the leading place in the world in terms of amount, development, infrastructure and profitability belongs to water parks in the USA which are over thousand in quantity.
Oleg Shaparenko

Source:  DOMCOM

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