As part of Skip the Queue’s mini-series celebrating 90 years of BALPPA, Laura Baxter is joined by Julie Dalton, Managing Director of Gulliver’s Theme Park Resorts, to talk about the story behind the UK’s only multi-site family-owned theme park group. Julie shares how Gulliver’s grew from a model village in 1978 into four resorts, the challenges of opening Gulliver’s Valley during the pandemic, and what it takes to run a growing theme park business without a corporate parent. This episode also explores family ownership, accessibility, accommodation, winter events and what the future holds for Gulliver’s.
In this episode of Skip the Queue, Laura Baxter is joined by Julie Dalton, managing director of Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts - and the head of what is, remarkably, the only multi-site theme park brand in this country that isn't owned by a corporate.
Gulliver's began in 1978 as a model village on a fifteen-acre hillside above Matlock Bath, built by Julie's parents Ray and Hilary Phillips - Ray a builder by trade, making the miniature houses himself. Warrington followed in 1989, Milton Keynes in 1999, and in July 2020, of all the moments to open a theme park, Gulliver's Valley in Rotherham.
Four resorts, more than fourteen hundred staff at peak, and a stubborn focus on the same audience it started with - families with children aged two to thirteen.
They talk about what it takes to run four sites as a family rather than a corporation, opening a park in the middle of a pandemic, and why so much of Gulliver's is still built in-house.
This episode is part of Skip the Queue’s mini-series celebrating 90 years of BALPPA, looking at the people and businesses shaping the UK attractions industry.
Show references:
Our Guest Host; in partnership with BALPPA:
Laura Baxter - Founder of YourCMO
BALPPA - https://www.balppa.org/
Our Guest:
Julie Dalton — Managing Director, Gulliver’s Theme Parks
Skip the Queue is brought to you by Merac. We provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world-class digital interactions. Very simply, we're here to rehumanise commerce. Your guest host is Laura Baxter.
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Credits:
Written by Laura Baxter (YourCMO)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Julie Dalton: We know our market, we understand our market and we love that market.
Laura Baxter: In this episode of Skip the Queue we are joined by Julie Dalton, managing director of Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts and the head of what is remarkably the only multi site theme park brand in this country that isn't owned by corporate.
Julie Dalton: We will push ourselves. Every penny we make is poured back into our business. Every penny is used to expand. We have no debt.
Laura Baxter: Gulliver's begun in 1978 as a model village on a 15 acre hillside above Matlock, built by Julie's parents, Ray and Hilary. Ray, a builder by trade, making the miniature houses himself. Warrington followed in 1989, Milton Keynes in 1999 and in July 2020, Gulliver's Valley in Rotherham.
Julie Dalton: People didn't want to travel, so the only way we could move the business forward was to move to the people.
Laura Baxter: Four resorts, more than 1,400 staff at peak and a stubborn focus on the same audience. It started with families with children aged 2 to 13.
Julie Dalton: Very much it evolved with us as a family. We understood what a family needed and that's what we created.
Laura Baxter: We talk about what it takes to run four sites as a family rather than a corporation opening a park in the middle of a pandemic. And why so much of Gulliver's is still built in house today. Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast where you get to meet some of the incredible people working in visitor attractions. Brought to you by Merac. I'm your host, Laura Baxter. This episode is part of our mini series marking 90 years of BALPPA, looking at the people and businesses shaping the UK attractions industry.
Laura Baxter: Julie, a huge welcome to Skip the Queue.
Julie Dalton: Thank you for having me.
Laura Baxter: Let's talk about its origins. So Gulliver's started as a model village in 1978. The industry would have looked so different back then.
Julie Dalton: Well, the industry probably wasn't. The industry we now know and love the industry very much back then was you had lots of seaside amusement parks. There wasn't the term theme park back in that time, you know, it was before the corkscrew went into Alton Towers. It was before Thorpe park opened. You know, if you think, I've just come back from America, Disney opened Florida in 1971. So the industry was very much in its infancy for what is a theme park and what is not a theme park. So yeah, to think were building a theme park back in 1978. No, that definitely wasn't on my parents agenda at that point.
Laura Baxter: So what was it, do you think they were trying to build what was it that did look like back then?
Julie Dalton: My mum and dad were house builders. So the piece of land that actually became Gulliver's Kingdom in Matlabach was bought houses on it was a Victorian pleasure land. So it had run into all sorts of bad conditions because nothing had been done with it. And dad picked up the piece of land to put housing on. The council said you can only put four houses on a 15 acre plot. Which just wasn't what mum and dad did at the time. They were serial entrepreneurs, didn't work, wouldn't give them planning permission for anything more. So dad in his spare time was a model builder. That's what he still does. So this time he builds models in his own time. And he said, well, okay, I can't put four houses on it. What about putting 100 buildings and 100 models and train lines and everything else?
Julie Dalton: Now Matlock Bath has been a tourist attraction since Victorian times, since they started coming to take the water. So the council welcomed it with open arms and dad set to with a team of model builders because he couldn't do it all on his own and carved a model village into the hillside. And that was where it very much started back in 1978, at 50 pence person to come in. I remember being on the gate on opening day, taking the 50 pences going, oh my God, this is amazing. People are giving me. Because 50 pence at that time could get you an awful lot of sherbet dib dubs. It was absolutely. As a seven year old child, it was amazing. And the site very much evolved and grew from that.
Julie Dalton: You know, went out, we looked at things, you know, we would go out for the day out. Dad would see something because he was a builder, he'd come back in and he'd build it and play areas arrived. The first rides arrived. I got into roller skating track in it. Then my brothers were into BMX biking and little motorbikes. Those went in. Then a little train went in and very much it evolved with us as a family. We understood what a family needed and that's what we created. That's what dad built as went up the hillside. And as a family we very much worked in that. You know, that's where catering came in for me because at the age of 12, I was in the cafe, running the little cafe.
Julie Dalton: And that's what you did, you baked the cakes before you went to school in the morning to be shut down, to go and be sold on site. So Very much a family business. Built with that ethos of were building an attraction for families.
Laura Baxter: That's extraordinary. So your dad essentially built you and your siblings your dream childhood?
Julie Dalton: Yeah, no, we worked. We didn't have holidays, you know, we didn't go away.
Julie Dalton: We worked because that was when the business was. But that is, that was the leisure industry, you know, that was all seaside towns. Seaside operators never take holidays in the summer because you're working, you're moving it forward.
Laura Baxter: So we've gone from building. I love that you've used the term serial entrepreneurs, because it's one thing to build something which is a huge skill and incredible in itself, but to then, as we all know today, working in this industry, to operate an attraction is an entirely different thing. How, how did they learn? How did they grasp that? Obviously it grew very quickly and to huge success. But it's quite a jump, isn't it, to go from just putting the buildings together to then operating with the public coming through your doors?
Julie Dalton: It is. And I suppose again, my dad comes from a corner shop. My granny and granddad had a corner shop. Grandma before, great grandma, she was a corner shop. So that running a business that moving things, you know, you buy your loaf of bread for 10 pence, you sell it for 20 pence, you can now buy two loaves of bread. And it's a basic business principle that's really important. That's been where we've gone from the start. Yes, you have to deal with, dealing with customers and we all know that can become more challenging the more of them you get.
Julie Dalton: And yes, it has changed significantly since 1978, but yet that fundamental of that business premise, that entrepreneurial premise of we don't build anything unless we can afford it, we don't take out debt unless we can afford it, goes back to those very early principles of you buy this, you met it, make it money, you can duplicate it and then you can just keep moving it forward. And that business premise is still running through Gulliver's.
Laura Baxter: As we've said, you guys are the only UK theme park brand that is multi site and isn't corporately owned, it's still completely free. Family run all four of the sites that you have. What do you think has set you guys apart from that? How have you managed to achieve that and keep everything still within the family business and have an incredible foresight that you've got?
Julie Dalton: It's going back to basic business principles. We've not done anything that has put us into a position where we couldn't afford to do it. You know, we will push ourselves. Every penny we make is called back into our business. Every penny is used to expand. You know, we have no debt, you know, we've not been out and bought the biggest and the best and the fastest. We've just gone. We'll just keep paddling our canoe, dealing with the market we deal with and just keep moving that forward. And that's really why we've gone to four parks, because we've taken our brand to our customers. You know, if you've got littleies, go back 20 years, you didn't have Xboxes and phones and everything in the back of cars. You know, you had to sit there.
Julie Dalton: For four hours in the back of a car and you had to play I Spy. Well, that was. People didn't want to travel. So the only way we could move the business forward was to move to the people. And you know, Matlock had filled, it was 15 acres. We'd filled everything we could. The obvious one was to go and do it again. And because we come from that building background, we build everything in house. You know, we do buy rides and bits in now, but a lot of what we've got has been built within our own teams and to have that very creative, productive team in house. We can be nimble so we can move and we can change. You know, we're not into somebody else's pipeline of oh my goodness, that's going to take two years to go through. Everything it needs to go through.
Julie Dalton: Actually, if we think we need to move and change, we can be that nimble. And that's how we've managed to move to part two, part three and then to part four. And it's been built with our own.
Laura Baxter: Teams and I think like you say, that huge advantage. And I've had the privilege of speaking to some other family businesses as well, Sundown Adventure and Polton's park and they speak again about that ability to be nimble when it's just yourselves and it's your own in house team. The fact that you can sit in a room, have a discussion, make a decision and say, yep, we're going to move on this. You could start as early as that afternoon and that's a huge advantage.
Julie Dalton: And you know, I think that is the leisure industry as a whole. People will ask me, what's your ten year plan? We don't have a ten year plan, we don't have a five year plan. We have a vision, we have a mission, we have goals, but we don't have a plan because we know the world changes. Yeah, pandemic. The world changed and we need to go in a different direction. You know, through the depressions that we've been through, the 2008 financial crash, we had to change what were doing to be able to come through the other side of that. But that's that nimbleness that's really important.
Laura Baxter: As you've mentioned it, we need to talk about 2020, because in the year where everything changed and the leisure industry had no idea what was coming next for it, you opened another site. Talk us through that.
Julie Dalton: We hadn't gone into building another site with the concept that we might have got a pandemic that wasn't on any of the planning that we had put in place. You know, everything was going to plan. As I've already explained, we don't take out debts. You know, we had saved the money to be able to buy the site and built the site. Every piece of land I am on, we own. So again, we had nothing that we had to pay anybody else. And we had saved and we'd scrimped and we got the money to build the site and it was going nicely. The money was going down because it was building a site. And then obviously, eight weeks before were scheduled to open, the world shut down.
Julie Dalton: And, you know, at that point were banking on our Easter takings on our other three sites to buy the catering equipment, the chairs, the tables, a lot of the furniture and the fit out was all coming out of that Easter takings. The recruitment was all coming out of the Easter takings. So were left with 250 acres of a partially finished theme park with nobody to build anything and no money left to do anything, because as everybody knows, we all take advance bookings. All that money had to go back. So, yeah, it was really, really badly timed. But what I suppose the lessons that came out of those, and those have been lessons that we've built in.
Julie Dalton: It's amazing how much wastage you have within your business when the chips are down and you can't just go out and buy some more buckets, when you actually start opening cupboards in all of our businesses. And I could go out onto any of my parks now and open cupboards. You'll always find there's a mop bucket and a array of other stuff that's just been put out of the way. And when we actually started, because we then have the time to go around our other sites, we found we got an awful lot of equipment that we would have bought now. So actually it filled. We found the power of actually what people throw away. Yeah. So we put 960 chairs onto. I know. Specifically because we found 960 chairs. Not one of them was a brand new chair.
Julie Dalton: All of them had come from other places, had been repainted, recovered. You wouldn't tell. Most of them are still operating today because you find actually you can reutilise equipment, you can bring stuff back. And that was a massive step change that we had planned to buy it all new, and then when you couldn't buy it all new, you had to look at different ways of doing it. You know, we just had some of our accommodation arrive on site. So I moved onto the site, my brother moved onto the site, our kids moved onto the site, Amadox. And we worked with the team of people that were living on site to finish it. You know, we did the planting. The planting, we looked at other planting. Where can we move?
Julie Dalton: And at 11 o' clock at night, because it was that hot summer, you were out there still watering the plants to get them to find, and you were picking up. You learned to upholster, you learned to paint, you learned to. My brother is an electrician. He did a lot of electrics. So we pulled that site through.
Julie Dalton: So that when Boris did say, you can open, went from 4th of July, independence Day, we opened the other three sites, 11th of July, we opened up Valley. And in that final two weeks, we recruited everybody, we trained everybody, we finished the sites as we needed to, because by the time we actually opened those doors, there was nothing left. Somebody asked me for mops and buckets, I went bananas because, whoa, we've got to lose what we've got. Let's make some money, then we can buy some more stuff. So, yeah, it was very traumatic. We stood, my brother and I, at the end of the street as the first customers came in. I looked at him, looked at me. We've both got tears rolling down our cheeks.
Laura Baxter: Oh, I bet.
Julie Dalton: How on earth did we manage to get this through and open? So my one or class to everybody is, do not try and open up a theme park in the middle of a pandemic. We were open then. If you remember that year of the roller coaster, that it was of, one minute you could open up your indoor area, then you couldn't, then you could open up rooms, then you couldn't, then you had to shut down. We didn't have a proper first 18 months of running that park. It wasn't a proper park, he were limited on the numbers. So we did virtually no marketing because there was no marketing. You couldn't market to people because you were capped on numbers. So it was a really bizarre opening of a theme park that actually we don't ever want to do again.
Julie Dalton: But it's thriving, it's moving and you're moving forward and you learned from it. The lessons we learned were huge.
Laura Baxter: Sounds like you say you've taken lessons from that still exist across the wider business and probably hugely beneficial as well. Like you say, just being a little bit more sensible, a little bit more resourceful and just checking things before just signing off A PO straight away to buy new cheque what you've got first.
Julie Dalton: cheque what you've got first cheque what you've got first. We were amazed at how much we had. You know, we now have upholsterers that work. We have on site, they we have in house. Because actually most of the chairs and tables that go are because they need reupholstery. And with the cost you're now paying, it looks like a new chair, it's reupholstered, it's back out into service again and it keeps your standards a lot higher because you can keep doing it. You don't have to wait till the hundred chairs all wear out, you can do as you need to do and go along with it.
Laura Baxter: So let's talk a little bit about your audience because obviously, as we say, when you first opened, the industry really didn't exist, certainly not in the way that it does today. And you're not far off your 50th anniversary since starting, and you've always kind of aimed very squarely at this family market. Kind of like the 2 to 12 year olds, real children focused. How much pressure has there been over the years as the industry has changed to kind of stretch that demographic a bit, kind of cater more towards the thrill seekers and the teenagers. And even now we're seeing a lot of adult only events kind of popping up as well within the industry.
Laura Baxter: What's kept you to that market? And have you ever felt the pressure to veer offering it a little bit?
Julie Dalton: No, we've not. We know our market, we understand our market and we love that market. You know, I don't want to be into dealing with crowds of youth. I don't want to be having to go down the road of having the highest, the fastest, the longest, the most severe. You know, our rides have absolutely moved on in the 40 years from being the Ladybird ride that we all know and love from years and years ago that a six or seven year old, eight year old would have quite happily had 40 years ago. They don't want that now.
Julie Dalton: They do need more of a thrill and we have those rides but they are all very much catering still for that core market and we're comfortable that we have our customers for that first 12 years of their life and then they go on to other things. You know, we've managed to build our business without having to buy the fastest, the longest. And we've seen so many parks over 40 years that have gone and chased that market, got themselves into financial difficulties and probably are not there now. So we're comfortable, we don't need to make a big song and dance, we don't need to be the biggest, we don't need to be the fastest. We're comfortable with where we are.
Laura Baxter: So let's talk about then where you have expanded which is into the accommodation and adding that to all of the parks. Now I came to Milton Keynes and we stayed in the wild west cowboy area. We absolutely loved it. And I think I love that more and more theme parks are turning into resorts as. Because sometimes a day trip isn't enough or even if it is, it just extends that memory and that experience with your family that it just gives it that something a little extra. And what I love so much about the Gullivers is the level of them. It was just phenomenal. My children still speak about it now. So like five, six, seven years on from whenever it was became how was that decision made to go from the day tripper market into a resort and offering those short stoves?
Julie Dalton: It was the move of that was the industry was moving more towards accommodation. A lot of people were putting bedroom blocks on and they were just a bedroom block. Well that just didn't work for us with our market. You know, hotels are great but often you can't get the spare bed in, you can't get the cot in, you definitely can't get bush chair in and you have to climb over the lot to go to bed at the same time because it's all in one room. It should be about being an experience. So very much that's where we've gone with this is how do we add to the experience? You don't need to go far with your kids to have a weekend away. You know, I'm sat in Warrington today.
Julie Dalton: We will have a lot of our customers that have only travelled 20 minutes down the road. But you've Come away and actually you've had that quality family time, because that's still one of the key ethics of what everything we do. How do we create that quality time with your family? How do you get the kids away from the iPad, the phones, the PlayStations and actually be a family again? And that's really what our accommodation is trying to do, is to get you away without having to travel halfway around the world for it to be able to go into an environment where the kids feel safe. You know, you are, you can sit down, you can enjoy the time, but you can also have that very different experience. If your kids are into dinosaurs, we have dinosaur units.
Julie Dalton: If your daughter is a princess, your son is a princess, you can come and stop in one of those. You, you can be a unicorn room, you can be a pirate room. We just opened a 18 bedroom pirate ship where you come and you stop in a pirate ship. I just opened a Castle. That's 18 bedrooms in a castle that you come and stop in. And everything is themed about wizards and everything else. And that's what makes the excitement for us, because we're not just rolling out the same accommodation every time. It's all about what's the experience that the customer is going to have. You know what's going to be different about coming and stopping with us? You can stop in a tent very cheaply. You can go right up to one of our lodges which has got everything.
Julie Dalton: And that will continue to evolve as we see new and exciting things. I can't tell you exactly what accommodation will go in next year because it's not struck yet. We've not found that little niche that's gone actually. That's something that's a bit different. And you slide in. Pirate ship hotel going down amazingly. We probably couldn't have told you 10 years ago that were going to build a pirate ship hotel, maybe not even five years ago. But it looks absolutely amazing and people are loving it.
Laura Baxter: So as well as being able to extend the duration that people are there through short visits, you've been super successful in being able to extend your season as well. As we know this business is hugely seasonal with the Land of Lights as well. So talk us through how that's all come about and how has getting into that winter trade helped evolve the business? What has it done for you?
Julie Dalton: Well, the winter trade isn't new to us. We've been doing Father Christmas winter experiences since the early 80s.
Laura Baxter: Wow.
Julie Dalton: So, you know, this is not something that is new to us. You know, we put just through Our Father Christmas experience, around 150, 160,000 people a year. So, you know, we are a very long established Christmas operation. You know, I love actually being involved in it because you will talk to families that have been coming to you for 20 and 25 years and this is their Christmas experience. Because it's more than just a trip to see Santa. You have your rides, you have your pantomime, you have your Christmas meal, you have your trip on a magical Santa express before you arrive in Lapland. And you tend then take an elevator trip that flies you across Lapland before you go and see Santa. We buy, we buy, I don't know, nearly 80,000 Christmas presents. We start buying them before we've even started the previous Christmas.
Julie Dalton: It's that many that go through. So for us, it's not a new time of the year. All we are adding to was the experience by putting the lanterns in. You know, we would have been earlier with it, but pandemic happened and we couldn't move. But, yeah, what that's opened up is that ability to come for two days. So our accommodation is filling, but it's also widened out that much broader demographic because we do get a much wider range. You can come to Land of Lights with your dog. We have Santa Paul's that runs in the. The middle of it. So again, it's just, it's still keeping true to our core market, but it's just expanding it out to be able to just nibble into other markets a little bit.
Julie Dalton: And people are always, it's always a great time of the year that run into Christmas. There's always the magic. So much so that December is now our second busiest month of the year from visitor numbers coming through. So we don't tend to slow down now. You know, you go back to when we opened and, you know, we opened for Easter and we finished at October. Well, that's not where we are now. We've filled our season all the way through, even sort of the down times. We have school visits coming through and we have school residentials coming through. So much more of what we do now is to fill in those dips. We all have the dips in the roller coaster.
Julie Dalton: When you're in this industry, if you can just flatten out that line a little bit, team, it's so much easier because you can keep people busy now. There is always something to do. Whether that's my maintenance teams, my buildings teams, my projects teams and my operational team. There is something to be Doing, which means you can keep a better calibre of team because they're always busy.
Laura Baxter: Absolutely. So very tricky for downtime then.
Julie Dalton: Downtime is getting more of a challenge. Yes, my rides team will go to me. You just can't open up another half a dozen days. When are we going to strip the rides and do all the work that we need to do on them? So yes, my technical director is going, julie, we can't just keep opening up days. I need to maintain these rides. So there's now big programmes where even we have second trains on some of our coasters. So you can just switch a train to keep the operation happening while all the maintenance still occurs.
Laura Baxter: I wish the public realised just how much goes on behind the scenes. And when you're open as much as you guys are, that's even more of a challenge and even more wizardry to keep it behind the scenes and not let it come into the park for it to affect anybody's visit that it is all hidden away. We're just tinkering in the background and operations are as normal to the public. But you've got engineers out the back frantically working.
Julie Dalton: One of Maester's team does an amazing job. Their busiest months of the year are January and February because those are sort of some of our semi closed down times. But yeah, there is more work done. You know the concept of, well, what do you do for the winter? Do you just go on holiday? No, that doesn't happen. We all like the fourth bridge just with paint alone. You finish painting one end and you have to start again at the other end. You know, it's never your easiest in your winter months. So we paint all year round now. We used to do it in the winter. We paint all year round now because you have to. It is a year round operation now.
Laura Baxter: So you guys are coming up for 50 BALPPA this year is 90, which is extraordinary. We what does the association need to offer independent operators like yourself to help keep with that growth, keep up with the pace of this industry and see it through for another 90 years?
Julie Dalton: It's being that voice, I think, and that community body to go forward and actually talk to government and push things through? You know, there are big players coming in. The Universal is heading our way. We don't quite know how that's going to be, but again, just talking this morning, there aren't enough ride engineers in the country to deal with how many Universal are wanting to take on. And that's where as an organisation we have to look and go, how do we get skills training into place? Because we're all going to suffer unless we bring more ride engineers through, unless we bring more specialists through. And it's where as a organisation we have to be pushing to try and get some of the skills based training going into place. So we have got a workforce to be able to take it forward.
Julie Dalton: We have got those skilled people. There will be no fiend developers left in the business for the next because they're all going to be working on that project. You know, I'm very concerned. I'm only 14 miles away from the Universal project at Milton Keynes. There isn't 4,000 people that are out of work in that area that are just going to be sucked. I am going to lose team into that. Right. How do I make sure with my management training programmes, my job creations, my work experience that actually we are creating that pipeline coming through so we can at least still keep operating when some takes all this bulk out, which is what they're planning to do.
Laura Baxter: And you think the input and the work that BALPPA do is going to be instrumental for that is really important? Yeah, yeah.
Julie Dalton: You know, I think we have, you know, the VAT that's just come in for the summer very late. I know. And those sort of centralised being able to cushion. Talk to the treasury, the Department of Business and everybody else. You know, you go back. I think one of the most significant things is when Balcon managed to get the planning changed. That actually within your square footage actually you've got theme park planning and you can move and change. If that hadn't have gone back through in the 80s, I don't think there'd be many theme parks now because they just couldn't have dealt with the planning processes to build a kiosk, to move a ride, because we have to do that's what we do. If that hadn't gone through, I don't think we'd have had an industry the way we have now.
Julie Dalton: And that was a pure Balpa because it talked as an industry to make that change. And you know, there's so many more. You know, were very much going through the COVID period. Balpa were at the table with the UK hospitality to push that. And I think that going through that Covid did change people's opinions of the service industry. When there was no service industry, people actually missed it. And suddenly the government realised what an important sector that is in the country. And it was the bar per UK hospitality that really brought us forward as an industry. It frustrates me greatly when people go, well, you can go work at a theme park until you get your job, you know, you can work down a bar till you get your proper job.
Julie Dalton: We all employ really highly skilled people to make this happen and we need to put more people in because you can't use AI to give great service.
Laura Baxter: Absolutely.
Julie Dalton: You can't use AI to run a ride. These service based industries will be the industries of the future and that's why we do need to invest in our training programmes, our management programmes and that's what we're doing.
Laura Baxter: Yeah, I love that and I couldn't agree more. I think it is such an underrated industry and I think actually the more digital we've gone and the more as we're now seeing with AI takeover, the more as humanity we crave those human experiences, those in person interactions and actually that's what we do the best in this attractions industries. We are creating those lifelong memories for people and that definitely can't be replaced by a computer or by AI.
Julie Dalton: The most magical moments can't happen. I was only talking to my call centre team this morning and they were saying we're having more people ringing us to book than were two years ago. Because actually what they want is that I want to speak to somebody to make sure that this is going to happen. They don't want to book it on an app, they don't want to book it through a system, they want that human interaction to actually go, what I'm going to spend my money on is going to be great because I've spoken to somebody about it. That first meeting as they arrive, I've spoken to somebody. It's not an automatic cheque in. No, no. It's about the experience. And that's what we have to really push as an industry is we have to keep upping our experience level.
Laura Baxter: Expectations really have changed over the years and I think certainly it's something we experienced post Covid and I think during cost of living or financial downturns because it's taking that bit more for people to part with their money because they don't have as much of it. So the expectations on the level of that experience is so much higher now. And because people can take to social media or review sites with their thoughts and feedback publicly rather than just taking out with somebody on the day.
Julie Dalton: If there is an issue that when you do get great customer experience on a day out, be that from the person that cheques you in at front of house and admission and greets you whether you get a paper map, whether you get told, oh, you've got little ones, I'd recommend you start at this point because that ride is great for them all. All those little micro interactions, that's what makes the real difference and I think people appreciate that so much more in today's world.
Julie Dalton: Yeah, every penny has got to get the maximum amount of books out of that penny. And you know, people are really careful at the moment. You know, you just see that if they can bring food in, they bring food in because then they might be able to buy a toy or something at the end to treat the child. But yeah, it is tight out there and I'm not sure it's going to get any better anytime soon.
Laura Baxter: So I know you say you don't have these kind of five year plans, ten years plan, but can you give us a little share of what is next for Gullivers? What might we see over the next few years?
Julie Dalton: We have just started talking about our 50th year and what we should be putting in, but that's not decided yet. But yeah, we are. We have got new rides and attractions coming in, we've got some new water based attractions coming in because again, you look at the way our weather is going, you look at the heat that is now coming, actually water is going to be really important. You know our splash zones absolutely came in when 2008 when the going got a little bit tough and people needed a cheaper alternative. Water is now coming back in because it's hot and actually we made the decide not to come to a theme park because it's going to be too hot. Actually if you can put some water in, you might just through the day.
Julie Dalton: So, you know there is definitely some water based attractions coming in. There will be more accommodation. As I've said to you, we know it's coming in, we don't quite know what it's going to be yet and you know it will flow through, particularly at our Rotherham site because we've got planning for an awful lot of the units coming in. And again, it's about stretching our different, you know, we are moved into sort of more of the adventure stuff, getting kids more hands on, getting them into the woods, getting into nature. Again, that's disappeared from a lot of young people's lives. You know, we're working very strongly with the residential market, school, residential market, because of that, trying to get an inclusive school visit. Nowadays you have to cater to so many different needs within a school group.
Julie Dalton: We've managed to fill a little area of that market that isn't just about canoeing down a river, swinging through a tree or crawling in mud, because a lot of kids just won't do that now. So we have managed to put that in as the inclusive market and we're working very heavily in the skills and work experience market as well. We know there is a massive skills problem. You know, I don't think you'll talk to any operator now that says, you know, the young people coming out of schools just haven't got that skills to be able to start work. You know, they don't know where they're going because the careers education isn't where it should be. So, you know, again, I'm now second generation. My children are just coming into the business now.
Julie Dalton: If I want this park to continue, these businesses to continue, we have to deal with this skills challenge, this block we have at the moment. Because there's so much on about NEETS and everything else. Well, we've sort of brought this on ourselves. We've made employing those 16, 17 years virtually impossible. Now with the regulations, you have to go through the cost of them because these young people need more time and effort. They've spent four years, five years in their bedrooms. That ability to pick to people isn't there anymore. And, you know, it has. I think as an industry, we're not employing as many younger people as we perhaps were 10 years ago. And those are our young people, those are employees of the future. You know, you want those to come through.
Julie Dalton: So we're very working very hard in that work experience space at the moment, to actually be part of the solution, hopefully to this skills gap, rather than just standing on my soapbox and complaining that the policies aren't right, schooling's not right, careers education isn't right. So I've done a lot of that and then I stopped and went, well, actually, I have to be part of a solution and I think as an industry, we can be part of that solution because we have those entry level jobs, but we have to have some help from the government to be able to achieve that. You know, there has to be a little bit of a break. If we're going to take young people and employ them, we have to help in that careers education side.
Julie Dalton: Because, you know, I just dealt with my nephew, he hasn't got a clue where he wants to go because he's 16, just got his GCSE, nobody's talked to him about a job, Nobody's got that message across. You're going to school to get a job. All school talk about is you go into school to get the next course, to get the next course. And then these young people come out the other end and go, oh, I need a job. And that's where Skill street was set up. Very much to work with different industries. And it's not just our industry that's having the problem actually. We need to tell our young people what job roles are out there. They don't know what they don't know absolutely.
Julie Dalton: Unless we start and talk to them and go, actually, you could be, you could do this, you could do that. There is this, there is these great opportunities that mean you, we don't need to just go into this sausage factory of education and come out at 22 with £60,000 worth of debt and go, what shall I do now? So I'm a big advocate of the whole apprenticeships. We have apprenticeships running on site, we have management training, we have work experience. Because unless we are part of that solution, we can't keep operating. You know, a theme park we've worked out has got 56 different job roles within a theme park. That's enough for most young people to find something that at least sparks their imagination.
Julie Dalton: And if we can spark the imagination, they can then take the training course that works for that or they can work with the business. But unless we spark it, we're just going to keep going around in circles.
Laura Baxter: I completely agree and I think you're everything we've spoken about perception as well because again, I think to the public we just look like a service based industry. You just see the front of house people, you see your catering people, you might see the odd maintenance person out and about, but kind of don't really think to what level of detail goes on in the background. And the sheer variety of roles that you need in this space is huge. I mean, I grew up wanting to be a writer and I thought that the only way I could ever be successful was to be a published author or a playwright. I was very into theatre and I remember a trip to Disney Paris and standing in Phantom Manor and hearing the pre show and thinking, someone wrote this, that's someone's job.
Laura Baxter: Someone is writing the pre shows and the storeys and the narratives for rides at a theme park. Oh my goodness, there is so many things. And then you start to look beyond 19. Okay, so there's obviously prop makers and set builders and concept artists and then there's the more physical hands on like the engineers and the welders and the electricians and everything else. And actually the sheer variety that we could offer young people. I think this is an incredible industry to offer apprenticeships in because it's so much more than just a customer service role.
Julie Dalton: Customer service. Most apprenticeships don't actually work for a theme park.
Laura Baxter: Yeah.
Julie Dalton: Ironically, my apprenticeships aren't ever in customer service, they're in other areas. You know, we do a lot of customer service. We do it particularly, we have a special interns programme for SEN young people because, again, that's a really interesting place to work in because a lot of these young people have no prospects of going anywhere or doing anything. And, you know, we've been running six years now and majority of them that have been through have all got jobs. And, you know, we graduated as this year's cohort eight weeks ago and I was brought to tears. One of my young people stood up and he went, when I came on this course, I was non verbal, I couldn't look anybody in the eye.
Julie Dalton: But I've always had a passion for arts, but I never thought I'd forget a job, let alone a job in a in park. He says, look at me now. I am stood up in front of 20 people speaking. I run a ride, I interact with the general public and this has made my life. And you go, oh, yeah, that's what.
Laura Baxter: We can do as an industry. Yeah.
Julie Dalton: Because we are used to recruiting, we're used to training, we do it every year to bring new people in. All we need to do is just change small slightly what we do to engage with these young people. There's a lot of trouble in some of these young people nowadays. They have a lot of baggage they're carrying. But if you could change just one life a year, five lives a year, he will ever go on to benefits?
Laura Baxter: Yeah, absolutely.
Julie Dalton: And that's massive. That's massive for us as a nation. Yeah. Well, it takes everybody working a little bit at this and that's where alphas are really important because actually, if we can put push forward with, as an industry, this is what we can do.
Laura Baxter: We need to get you an audience with the new pm. I think we need you to sell this to him. But in the meantime, what would be good is if any operators that are listening to this, that have completely resonated with that and want to implement something similar to what Gulliver's have on that scale, where should they start? How do they go about bringing in these kind of levels of apprenticeships and helping out Our next generation.
Julie Dalton: There is lots of opportunities coming now through sort of some of the job guarantee schemes. There are some great charities and your local special needs schools that are working on supported internships are huge at the moment and we've got some amazing team members out of them. It is about going and talking. People are craving companies to be part of this, to give opportunities for young people. Now I think there needs to be more benefits for companies to do this. You know, if we can keep a young person from going neat. It costs £24,000 a year to keep a person a neat on benefits. Well that's minimum wage. That's a job in our industry if we can work with them. And I think there are some green shoes to help with that and some opportunities.
Julie Dalton: You know, I think we have 12, 24 year old pluses that are on work experience with us. Oh my God, these young people, they're not young but they haven't got their foot in the door. Yeah, we will be employing six of those 12 tomorrow because they are that good. And you know, there are some great people but it may take a little bit more time and energy and anybody, any business going into it needs to be prepared that it's not looked as like employing somebody. They come in and they disappear again. But more of our team that we're employed anyway now need more time and energy. So it's a bit changing it at sort of that ethos of employment. But if you can get the right people, they will stay with you for life.
Laura Baxter: Definitely. Definitely. I think theme parks and attractions are a great place to give people a safe place. And I think we, because we are such a weird and wonderful industry, you've kind of got to have a bit of an off the scale imagination, haven't you? I think we'd all go as far as to say we're a little bit quirky, perhaps a few misfits in there and actually coming into a space where that's the norm and you feel totally safe and totally at home to express that wild imagination is so extraordinary. And then as you say, that creates.
Julie Dalton: Loyalty, that creativity and that thinking outside the box is what we need as an industry. You know, I would say probably I'm definitely on spectrum in some way. My brother is. Most of our senior team are actually. Let's celebrate that because that's what gives us the edge. You know, we label these young people with autism and adhd. Actually no, they've just got special skills. We just need to learn how to harness those special skills rather than give them all this package that they are special and the world should change for them.
Laura Baxter: Yeah, I love that. I love that. What a gorgeous note to end on. Julie, thank you so much. It's been so wonderful to hear your storey and I love your passion for this topic. I'm sure you'll probably get some people get in touch with you, post this episode. Going out to discuss it a bit more because I think it's wonderful what you're doing.
Julie Dalton: Very happy to, you know, if we're going to keep the industry going, we have to improve, embrace some of this because it's not the same world as it was 20 years ago.
Laura Baxter: Julie, thank you so much for giving your time today. Really do appreciate it. And thank you for being a part of BALPPA's 90th with Skip the Queue.
Julie Dalton: Well, BALPPA has been part of our life all the time we've been in history. So fully deserved.
Laura Baxter: This episode was written by Laura Baxter, edited by Steve Folland and produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle from Plaster, as well as Wenalyn from Skip the Queue HQ.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, share and comment on the episode in your podcast app Apple Podcasts, Spotify. It all helps to spread the word about us and the amazing attractions we work with. Be sure to visit skipthequeue.fm for this episode's transcripts and listen to the rest of the season so far. Once again, I've been your host, Laura Baxter, and I'll see you next time.