(AFP Photo)
Amusement parks represent a significant factor attracting Egyptian families, with political events not affecting the family’s desire to please their children, according to Director of Dolphin Park Ahmed Metwally.
Metwally said the greatest influence on visitors is the school year, as most beneficiaries of these parks are children. He added that the most suitable time for those families is also at the beginning or end of the month, depending on family finances.
Most amusement parks are far from demonstrations and violent events, and the visitors do not care much because all what they want is to please a child and temporarily end the daily pressures, he added.
Violence and demonstrations affect mostly financial organisations, such as the stock market and the movement of import and export, Metwally said.
“Dolphin Park works on the same power and did not reduce labour or shorten the opening hours of the park,” said Metwally. “The impact of violent events does not affect approximately 30% of the park’s visitors, because they have become immune to the events and don’t care, while 50% of them would prefer to be in safety and not to go out for trips on these days.”
Metwally revealed that Dolphin Park seeks to attract a large number of visitors within its annual plan and has already reduced ticket prices.
Meanwhile, Sales Manager of Gero Land Park Hend Ahmed said that political events and violence greatly affect park visitors, because they have concerns about road safety during these events. Visitors could face problems on their way home after their trip to the park.
“Amusement parks are for entertaining in safety and are not so necessary to take the risk the lives of families and their children, therefore under the violence and demonstrations families and visitors prefer to stay at home” added Ahmed.
She confirmed that violence and demonstrations significantly affect the park visit and the rate of decline in the visit to Gero Land is about 30%, but sometimes there is no impact.
“We work on overcoming this reduction through a number of offers, including lowering ticket prices from EGP 60 to EGP 50”, said Ahmed.
Sales manager of Al-Radwan Company for Funfair Games Ashraf Abdel Aziz said that since the 25 January Revolution, the company’s work has been affected.
“The company has worked for 12 years in the field of electrical funfairs for clubs and small parks for kids, but the demand for the purchase of funfair games decreased significantly because of the security disorder” said Abdel Aziz. “Most of the small parks and amusement clubs need to work in an atmosphere of security, but can’t work in such circumstances, which affected the company’s sales,” Abdel Aziz said.
Moreover, the dollar exchange rate affects the company sales, as it imports raw materials from abroad, and the rise in the dollar leads to higher prices of imported raw materials, which raises the price of the games, according to Abdel Aziz.
Abdel Aziz added that the company is heavily influenced by current events and instability, which led the company to reduce its number of employees. This was due to the high prices of games and import prices, in addition to sales reduced by 70% compared to the years prior to the revolution.
He went on to say that to overcome this reduction, the company and other manufacturing companies import funfair games from China, instead of importing raw materials from Korea and Saudi Arabia, because the cost is less. Abdel Aziz added that this would affect the factories and companies that collect raw materials and manufacture the games, many of which are already closed.
