Six areas of work from which address the planning of leisure areas, with emphasis on generating content of conceptual depth and carrying them out in container spaces adapted to those ends.

In coming years, tourism revitalization will focus in identifying new elements of competitiveness; one of them is undoubtedly the need to move our customers, to make them live memorable experiences, to provide attractive content for certain territories and business and reinvent the “drivers” for some destinations. This will make the planning and development of new leisure theme spaces acquire special prominence.

The planning for these areas is conducted through six major areas of work:

The original idea: We need to trust a professionals, a person or a team, to "invent" a new concept and we must trust them to the end. This is a highly creative task and thus subjective. The doubts about the team or their ideas end up generating hybrids of little chance of success. The idea must be reasonably practicable admitting that there is always a risk - to be limited at maximum- and that will require the necessary time to mature.

Contents: We must escape the banality. Bet on contents that match the idiosyncrasy and culture of the area, concepts with roots; contents that generate real emotions like the ones generated in the brain, not the stomach. The contents should be capable of attraction: by innovation, by applying leading virtual technologies and the ability to persist in time beyond fashion. The availability of content for "all audiences", from older people to children, will increase our ability to appeal and the expectation of attendance.

Container: Ideally, the container should be a unique space, for its history and associated memories, if it already exists, or for its creative design if it’s new. The entire set must take into account the constant increase in life expectancy, so it must satisfy very good conditions of accessibility and security. The container should serve the content, the key idea, and not the other way except for containers of special uniqueness, in which case its existence and history must be considered early in the approach of the idea.

In creating the content and designing or choosing the container, should be considered the fact that its development will not occur independently, will always interact with other businesses, will require certain infrastructure and it will belong to a particular destination that is why it will be quite advisable that these aspects are taken into account if the project pretends to be integrated. This integration may be one of the key issues for success

The area or space: territorial implantation is essential. A poor location will condition the whole project. In urban areas, the environment must be consistent and accessibility, mobility and road systems issues must be considered again. The space has to be perceived as a "good neighbor", not to arouse criticism and fit into this environment. In non-urban open spaces we must have a great respect for nature and in environmental terms, be demonstrably sustainable. The initiatives that, by the size of the project, involve a new spatial planning engage other aspects of space and necessarily require political will.

The Project: will have an integrative overview. The project is not only the viability plan or the conceptual development or the territorial model or the commercial and marketing orientation or the infrastructure plan or the relational front; the project must be "a whole". The fragmentation of the "Project" in multiple views has presented in the past difficulties in implementation and a remarkable lack of coordination. It is very important to assign responsibility for the "Project" to a single team capable of uniting and coordinating various groups, capable of directing all efforts towards the same goals. A team with multidisciplinary and comprehensive vision that can act as backbone for various specialists.

The implementation and development: As important as the integration of the project is to get a professional implementation and execution of various and varied stages of development. This is an issue closely linked to the previous one, which requires extremely detailed planning and no casual at all, that can harmonize the following elements to ensure the customer the good end of it. I quote some of them as an enunciate not as a limitation:

Location Analysis
Market Study
Creativity, concept and content development
Economic and Financial Analysis. Long term viability.
Territorial development and planning; construction of facilities, equipment and infrastructure. Incorporation of technologies
Communication Plan
Relational Plan
Marketing and commercialization Plan
Administrative front (government)
Planning and implementation of environmental project
Planning, recruitment and specific training of human resources.
The pre-opening phase and roll
The opening
Settings of the first stage.


Xavier Vives - C4T
Director - Partner