Merlin Entertainments Opens New Gardaland Adventure Hotel
Merlin Entertainments, one of the world’s leading visitor attraction operators, has recently opened its new Gardaland Adventure Hotel at the Gardaland theme park complex in Italy to extend its accommodation offer. The new hotel counts 100 rooms and increases the park’s accommodation capacity of approx. 40 percent – the already existing Gardaland Hotel has 247 rooms (cf. EAP news from September 11th, 2015). A special characteristic of the Gardaland Adventure Hotel is the rooms’ unique theming – from now on guests can choose whether they would like to stay in the Wild West, the Arctic, the Jungle or in a room à la “One thousand and one nights”. Regarding the categories, 90 rooms are “standard”, further eight rooms are labeled “superior”. Furthermore, there are two junior themed suites and six rooms specially equipped for disabled guests. The hotel also includes the “Tutankhamen” Egyptian themed restaurant to complete the new accommodation offer.
Nearly at the same time with the Gardaland Adventure Hotel opening, Merlin Entertainments launched its new “Explorer Glamping” accommodation at the British Chessington World of Adventures Resort: a camping space, which combines all the adventure of camping with the comfort of a hotel stay – a perfect offer for families. This follows Merlin Entertainments’ announcement to double the number of new rooms added to its attractions and to transform its theme parks into destination resorts – until 2020 the scheduled capital investment in accommodation is of 200 million British Pounds (approx. 240 million Euro).
„Merlin Entertainments’ new accommodation openings are another important step in our strategy to transform our theme parks into short break destinations. The addition of themed accommodation continues to clearly demonstrate the positioning of our theme parks as short break resorts whilst yielding attractive returns in its own right. We have a strong pipeline of hotel and other accommodation projects planned, as we continue on our strategy,” said Justin Platt, Managing Director, Resort Theme Parks at Merlin Entertainments. (eap)
