Thailand Amusement Industry

The Dream World entertainment park was established in 1993 by the Kitipraporn family, which at that time owned Magic Land, another theme park. They realized that there were only three amusement parks in Thailand: Magic Land, Siam Park City, and Safari World. The director came up with an idea to build a new amuse-ment park for Thai people as well as the tourists because the three amusement parks were quite popular.

The various attractions at the Dream World amusement park generate around a billion baht annually with the number of visitors increasing by 10% each year. Given the potential income and the growth of this market the competition was clearly getting stronger with aggressive sell-ing strategies for new attractions. At present, among the major amusement parks offering more or less similar attractions, Dream World is the leader with about 2 million visitors per year.

They have approxi-mately 5,000-7,000 tourists on the weekday and over 10,000 on the weekend. Holiday weekends sometimes bring 20,000-50,000 people a day. They annually generate over 2 million baht from both Thais and foreigners. More than 70 percent of the visitors are Thai, and about 30 percent are foreigners. March, April and May represent the peak sea-son of the year. Thai schools are normally closed in Oc-tober, so many visitors come then, too. July and August represents the low season so the park cooperates with the schools to encourage schools to have field trips at that time.

As a result of the growing demand, last year Dream World opened 2 new attractions for teenagers and a botanic garden for adults, at a cost of 200 million baht.  

In addition to this investment, Mr. Ampol Suthiphein, As-sistant Managing Director of Dream World explains that the marketing plan for last year provided a 50 million baht budget to enhance the environment at the park which celebrated its 15th anniversary. Previously the marketing budget was approximately 20-30 million baht.

The visitors responded well to the past promotion and were very satisfied with what the package offered. The pricing strategy needed to be implemented with regard to a specific timeline as certain occasions were not always appropriate for discounts and no discount could be given when new attrac-tions were opened, Khun Ampol said.

To ensure the success of Dream World’ marketing plan there are now more attractions to meet the customers’ demand for joy and excitement. However, the fight for market share is intensifying between old and new attraction providers, no-tably with the recent entry of Wonderworld, a park in Pattaya which announced the introduction of new attractions and threatens to gain a leading position on the market.

As a result, Siam Park City, another popular amusement park in Thailand and Dream World’s biggest competitor, re-directed its marketing strategy: they reinforced their selling points with new attractions at their Bangkok Water Theme Park.

Siam Park City was established by Amornpan Nakorn Co,Ltd. It was built on a land of 480,000 square meters in 1975. There is an artistic park available for every member of the family as well as an attraction for tourists.Siam Park City had a grand opening on the 19th November, 1980. There was a lot of good feedback and attention since it first opened. It has been im-proving and developing regularly. Previously, Siam Park City’s selling point was only its Water Theme Park. Now it is changing to be an amusement park offering attractions of international standards.

During 2007-2010 had been the prime time for Siam Park City to expand itself by importing many rides with more than 3 billion baht invested which has improved the perception of Siam Park City as the premier amusement park in South-east Asia. Siam Park City was also in the Guinness World’s Records with more than 30 imported rides and the biggest imitation beach in the world. 

Mr. Chaiwat Leungamornlert, the president of Siam Park City, reckoned that it was time to adapt to the new market dynamics and adjust the strategy even to the point of changing the original brand name “Suan Siam” –which had been in use for the past 26 years—to “Siam Park City”. Further, in order to raise the amusement park to international standards, more than 3 billion baht was spent to import amusement equipment from Europe and America for a total of 17 new attractions of which 6 are already installed, including a “Super Hurricane” and a Gee-Weez rollercoaster machine. The remaining amusement machines will be gradually put into service and will bring the total number of attractions up to 47.

In the past, Siam Park City’ yearly income was 200 million baht, most of it coming from the Water Theme Park. Last year there were 2-3 million visitors, each paying 200-300 baht. Once all the attractions are in service the price will be raised up to 1,000 baht per head. Given the price increase and the growth in the number of visi-tors, Siam Park City’s income will increase dramatically.

Siam Park City is considered to be the pride of Thailand for the attractions that attract many tourists and for-eigners.

For most of the things that Siam Park City has been doing from the year 1980 until these days has brought pride and impression for helping the country on traveling, economics, education, and of course the smile on everyone’s faces. 

As in any business, each amusement brand strives to create its own identity based on original characteristics in order to maximize market penetration in both the occasional and repeat customer segments, thus, offering new fun activities to secure more visitors is one of the most popular ways for each brand to grow while differentiating itself from its competi-tors.

Siam Park City’s change of strategy has created growth in the amusement park industry at large: for example, it led Dream World to commit to a change of plan within the last four months of this year when it ran a promotion with the Pepsi Company enabling visitors to the park to get a 50 baht discount for presenting 3 Pepsi caps upon purchase. Such a scheme was sound strategy and appropriately ad-dressed consumer needs. Dream World is also planning to enter into other alliances in order to increase customer interest in its park during the high season and the school holidays from October 2009 to May 2010.

Approximate Number of Touristin Dream World each year

Popular Dream World Rides

Super Splash: 50 baht per ride

Hurricane: 70 baht per ride Sky coaster: 70 baht per ride

Grand Canyon: 50 baht per ride Spider: 50 baht per ride

Bump Car: 30 baht per ride Rapter: 40 baht per ride

Cable Car: 80 baht per ride

CreditsPornwanuch Ubolcholaket #5207640086Phakchira Natheesuwan #5207640292Francois Harger #5207640508Pabhat-an Pitibhabhong #5207640730Suphakrit Maneeprawat #5207640805

Thanks to the advisorAjarn Joel Gershon

Special thanks to our sourcesAmusement Creation Co., Ltd.(Dream World Thailand)Mr. Ampol SuthipheinSiam Park City Co., Ltd.Mr. Chaiwat Leungamornlert