Date Published: 28/10/2010

Paramount executives and interested parties to visit on the 8th, or is that the 11th...

Paramount Murcia theme park, may not be what we thought it was going to be

2010-10-28

Paramount executives and interested parties to visit on the 8th, or is that the 11th... The EFE press agency put out a release this week saying that representatives from Paramount Licensing would be visiting the Region of Murcia on the 11^th November, three days later than that given by La Verdad, who say that their sources indicate the visit will be on the 8^th.

EFE indicate that representatives from Marta consulting may also be in attendance, together with other interested parties who are involved in the possible development for a theme park in the region, licensed by Paramount Licensing to the Proyectos Emblematicos de Murcia company, which has Jesus Samper and his Santa Monica Financial Group as an 80% stakeholder.

Both of these news sources say that "sources close to the project" have said that Alhama is the site which is the most suitable for the location of the future park, but some of these inside sources are being even more candid and apparently have said that the park will be nothing like Disneyland Paris or Terra Mitica, but a rather more sedate version, something akin to the Orlando attraction, in which the layout is more evocative of actually being in the Paramount films themselves. This is quite an interesting development, as when the project was first made public, Pedro Cruz was quoted as saying that the park would be really different to anything currently in existence, which caused a few people to anxiously mop their brows and start raking through modern art catalogues, the Consejero having quite a penchant for alternative projects, including the much publicized Murcia No- Typical promotional campaign.

Discussion was aired over what a Dali theme park would look like, or a Picasso park, or whether hed opt for a funky version with art installations, but it seems that perhaps the thinking has erred more to the typical, rather than the No-typical type of theme park.

Another rather interesting little snippet came from La Verdad again, with the exclusive that the visitors were keen to visit Cartagena and assess the port installations and the opportunities this could create for shipping the passengers into the theme park from the visiting cruise liners.

The paper started excitedly calculating just how many potential punters this would bring into the park, multiplying out the number of visitors per ship and how many people would be going into the park each time a liner came in.

Which sparked off a small enquiry in our minds as to whether the visitors were aware that the current situation regarding the liners is a little like one of these Hollywood movies, I forget which one, it could be Star wars, or maybe Gunfight at the Ok Corral, something along those lines.

Basically, the Mayoress of Cartagena has spent an awful lot of money building a very nice port, with lovely marble flooring and a portside disembarkment point designed to make it as easy as possible for all the lolly laden tourists to walk off the boats and into the shops of Cartagena where the theory is that they will spend lots of money, so the mayoress can pay back her bank loans. ( Which she has just renegotiated so she can borrow some more.)

The shopowners have been complaining vociferously that the tourists dont spend enough money, and that they are bundled off in coaches by the cruise operators who take them away to spend their money elsewhere, or put in coaches and driven around the pay to enter historical sites of Cartagena, so they dont go anywhere near the shops.

The cruise ship operators dont want their tourists wandering free, as long as they can make a few euros extra by flogging the tourists trips, so long before the visitors reach the port, theyre already booked onto a cavalcade of coaches.

Being an inquisitive kind of person, I sat myself on a bench one day and had a chat with a few of the tourists returning to their liner and was horrified to see that none of the trips being offered by the cruise company were even within the Region of Murcia. These tourists were coming to Cartagena at 10am, and being put on a coach to Alicante, driven around there for a couple of hours, then brought back to Cartagena in time for afternoon tea, for which privilege they were being charged 47 euros a head.

Not long after this, an initiative was announced to try and start bringing them to Murcia capital instead for cultural tours, a proposal which was greeted with howls of outrage from the Cartagena businessmen and shop owners who were distinctly unimpressed by the idea that their tourists were going to spend their money in Murcia capital.

There is a fierce and bitter rivalry between Murcia and Cartagena. Cartagena figures it should have been the capital of the region as it was here first, and is the most historically important City in the Region ( thats what they say, ) whilst Murcia is an upstart, having only been founded during the arab occupation, many centuries later than Cartagena. Youve only got to see the frenetic build-up to the local football derby games between these two to see just how deep this feeling really goes.

And theres also the structure of the regions tourism industry to consider here.

We have the Region of Murcia tourism promotion, which is divided up into countless sub-"businesses" each one promoting something different, culture , tourism, this bit of the region, that aspect of the region, artesans, food, development and on it goes, every one doing its own thing seemingly independent of everyone else.

Then each council has its own promotion, but again, theyve got several different concejals promoting various bits and bobs and with different responsibility, and each council is competing with the next. The really crazy thing is that in some councils youve even got one attraction competing with another, so although every tourist office is supposed to have leaflets for every other tourist office, they actually dont want the visitors to have them, because they might go into another municipality and spend their money somewhere else.

And one attraction is desperate to get the best visitor figures, so wont even tell you the other place exists even though theyre in the same city.

Theyve got the leaflets alright, because they have to have them to get their certificates, but theyre all hidden in stationery cupboards and under counters. And trying to get them is like trying to get blood out of a stone, apart from in a few well-run offices who co-operate with each other. Its basically just competition.

Anyone who thinks the Mayoress of Cartagena is going to sit there meekly whilst her tourists are bundled into coaches by the thousand and shipped off to a theme park for the day has not met the Mayoress of Cartagena.

The only way those tourists are going to a theme park is if its a Cartagena theme park, and with this well connected and autocratic lady in power, no-one should be complacent enough to think that that isnt still a possibility.

And with the competitiveness between the councils, shes going to fight hammer and nail to keep them in Cartagena, which is why shes spent so much money getting them there in the first place.

Be honest, the only place she wants them is in the Roman Theatre Museum and the Puertos de Cultura paid attractions.

And why shouldnt she, thats what shes invested her money into Cartagena for, not so that they can be bundled off into someone elses municipality.

But it could all be good news for us.

These investors are businessmen and if youre going to put 3 billion euros into an investment, youll want to make sure that there are low cost airlines flying to the airports, good connections in from the outlying airports, bus routes, local trains, a good road infrastructure.

Which will benefit us all and sort out the problems were currently experiencing.

3 million visitors. Thats a big increase on the 1.3 million we get now.

But dont count on pinching them from the Mayoress of Cartagena.