Hong Kong’s Ocean Park gets ball rolling on huge overhaul with invitation for potential partners to submit proposals
- Aberdeen theme park issues invitation to bidders to join first round of tender process for its overhaul
- Transformation plan unveiled in January aims to make 44-year-old theme park a financially self-sufficient leisure and retail destination
The Aberdeen theme park issued an invitation to bidders on Friday to join the first, or pre-qualification, round of the tender process for its overhaul. The tender stage will begin in late 2021 or early next year.
The transformation plan unveiled in January aims to make the 44-year-old theme park a financially self-sufficient leisure and retail destination focused on education and conservation, with a variety of entertainment and other activities outsourced.
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Hong Kong’s Ocean Park unveils new water theme park attraction
Under the proposals, the park would operate less than a third of the site’s footprint, an area including conservation and education facilities, cable cars and a new Water World attraction. The rest of the resort would be run in partnership with external operators, who would pay rent or share revenue with the park.
In a statement on Friday, the park said the pre-qualification exercise would help maintain a manageable number of bidders while ensuring respondents shared its vision, and had the requisites to deliver the development proposals.
Bidders were invited to co-develop three new zones within the park with an area totalling 376,000 square metres.
Ocean Park’s new Water World will open to Hong Kong public on September 21
These include a free-entry retail, dining and entertainment zone in a lowland area, and adventure and wellness zones in the upper park. Respondents can submit their interest in either one, two or all three zones. For the adventure and wellness zones, bidders could express an interest in developing and operating selected parts.
The statement said bidders were encouraged to integrate certain principles into their proposals, including objectives such as being environmentally and socially responsible.
Potential respondents will be given eight weeks to respond with proposals and feedback.
Park chairman Lau Ming-wai said: “We can only achieve the park’s new vision with the right line-up of partners who share the long-term goal not only for the park, but also for Hong Kong in general.”
The park, once one of Asia’s top attractions, is reeling from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept tourists away and forced its closure for most of last year.It received a lifeline through a HK$5.4 billion (US$692 million) government bailout, but had to close again in December because of a surge in infections in Hong Kong. It reopened in February.
At its peak, the park attracted 7.7 million visitors a year. The last time it earned a net operating surplus was in the 2014-15 financial year with HK$13.7 million. Open for only 129 days last year, 2019-20 revenue fell 58.7 per cent to HK$717.1 million, the biggest year-on-year drop on record.
Former park chairman Allan Zeman said he supported the build-operate-transfer model for redevelopment.
“It might be one way to relieve some of the financial burden of the government [as the sole owner],” he said.
Quality control was the most important issue, he said, and bidders’ ideas should be compatible with the rest of the park.
A transfer after 20 to 30 years of operations was reasonable but that could be extended depending on the performance of the firms, he said.
