Euro vs. Florida Disney Success

Euro vs. Florida Disney Success of Florida Disney: Walt Disney Company -- WDC theme park and resort complex in Florida comprises of varied set of service and entertainment properties covering an area of 30,500 acres. An excess of 50,000 'cast members' or employees in Disney parlance provide services to more than 1, 00,000 guests daily. World Disney World Resort -- WDWR properties possess a huge amount of independent authority and flexibility, and the organization is distributed in a greater manner compared to other more conventional industries.

One of the major components of the huge Disney enterprise is WDWR. Due to its size, employee and visitor population, and organization, the facility is fundamentally a distinct community. (World Disney World Resort: Environmental Management Case Study) Walt Disney translated his dream by illustrating Mickey Mouse in a comic strip during the 1920s. About 80 years later his dream turned true when WDC became of the richest corporations of the world.

Because of strong leadership and excellent management skills, Disney has been able to make forays into many fields like entertainment, communication, and technology and customer service. Disney earned a good reputation in their businesses and persists to do so by leading by example and management by walking around. The Florida Disney is successful for its customer service and empowerment of its cast members. The cast members get a totally special type of training and several special facets of leadership at the WDW.

Among these are that leaders should motivate their cast members to build an emotional rapport with the guests, irrespective of the cast members remaining on stage or off. (Disney World Paper) Disney CEO, Michael Eisner states that WDW is propelled by an 'emotional engine' rather than an 'economic engine' Realizing this particular aspect, the restaurant manager initially makes the Cast Members to bask in the guest experience prior to their training on the specific roles they are assigned to carry out.

In that guest experience, the Cast Members visualize the big picture and their role in it. In the innovative system of WDW, the Cast Members are given themselves to 'own' the guest experience as opposed to the top-down culture of commanding and issuing directives. However through the trust of the Cast Member's instincts and judgment to identify and refer to the elements is according to Disney 'bad show', the manager models a leadership style which motivates and rewards employee involvement.

The leadership approach at Florida Disney is the outcome of a transformation of a business thinking that happened within Walt Disney which is called as 'Performance Excellence'. Identifying novel competitive force in the early 1990s it was understood at Disney that to remain a benchmark in creativity, customer service and entertainment, every Cast Member at Florida should assume the role of an active partner in the success of the company.

This initiative makes linkages to the leadership behaviors to the fundamental and quantifiable measures of Disney's business which is the totality of Cast experience, Guest satisfaction, and customer loyalty. And in the beginning it was realized that the concept of Performance Excellence revolved on two major factors which is involvement and passion. (Disney World Paper) The Florida project's purpose for creating Disney World was to build a brand new type of city which was safe unlike any other urban community in America.

Walt Disney himself wanted EPCOT which means Experimental Prototype Community for Tomorrow to become the new city, having its own residents. The choice of Florida was because of its beautiful weather conditions throughout the year, but the downside was that the population is low. To address this, Disney decided for investment in marketing to draw people from across the world. At present WDW occupies 30,500 acres and 35,000 people work for the company. The World Disney World Parks and Resorts earned revenue earnings for the year 2004 was $7,750,000,000.

(Walt Disney World: Project News) Walt Disney World located in Florida is the icing of the cake of the Walt Disney Company which is a $23- billion media business which might just be the single most powerful and influential force in the globalization of Western culture.

In the high-tech world in the new millennium, the real control to promote and consolidate consumer capitalism does not rest with the International Monetary Fund, Texaco or Monsanto rather with the control over the 'infotainment industry' encompassing film, TV, music, ideas and information which according to a writer has been coined as the 'the sinews of our post-modern soul'. The Florida theme park drew 1.2 million tourists last year with the bulk of them being British nationals.

However, 40 years back, this region of central Florida was unscathed by mass tourism with a low population of little over 20,000 in Orlando. The Florida Park houses an awesome 43 sq miles of land that is double the size of Manhattan. Huge road signs guide the visitors into the Disney's Animal Kingdom; the latest of the parks is a massive 500-acre $800- million project. (Inside the Disney Dream Machine) Animal Kingdom is Disney's maiden initiative into real life which is the 'amazing reality of nature'.

The primary attraction is a recreation of an African savannah having imported wildlife, plants and flowers. Besides, there is the Tree of Life which is an astonishing 14-storey baobab that has been conceived by the Disney 'imaginers' a term coined perhaps by Walt Disney himself to describe the people he recruited to design his inaugural theme park in California. The steel made massive baobab with painted concrete has its trunk and roots carved into characteristics of 325 various types of animals.

A serpentine queue of visitors silently reorders within the 170-foot base of the tree gradually proceeding to the cinema inside the trunk. Inside are filled up with new vista, music plays from invisible players, video screen give a sneak preview of what's happening inside and posters span the walls. More than 3,400 people work at the Animal Kingdom and a phenomenal 50,000 in total at the Walt Disney World. It is a powerful remark on the changing characteristics of the U.S.

economy that the place at present houses the highest number of workforce in the country at a single worksite. A significant feature at the Florida theme park which contributes for the success of the park is that employees i.e. The cast members are assigned jobs on a routine basis as per age and appearance. Translated in practice, this implies that all the pretty, young people' are assigned the primary frontline jobs. Cultural influences play a major role in assignment of job responsibilities. Haitian women are assigned housekeeping.

Puerto Rican young people get to work in food services and its preparation, African-American work as cooks or stewards or in food preparation. The Florida Disney theme parks are regarded as much about buying as they are regarding entertainment where the average spending by the visitors is $21 per person.

(Inside the Disney Dream Machine) What went wrong in Euro Disney in France? While the Florida Park is an icon of success, on the other hand the swarming crowds at the Euro Disney are no indication of its profitability with its revenues dropping and Euro Disney facing net losses. The matter that defies everybody's imagination revolves around the fact that how can such a crowded tourist destination afford to make losses. For one, the problem has been the opening during 2002 of another park, Walt Disney Studios.

On an average the number of foreign tourists visiting France dropped by around 2.5% during the year 2003. It was expected that the second park would increase the number of visitors from roughly 12 million to the region of 16 million to 18 million levels which is supposed to bring profitability. After passage of two years and expenditure of 600 million euros in construction, the number of visitors hovered to just around 12 million visitors for the two parks taken together. One more problem might also be the product.

There have not been any new big rides since years and the park has failed in its effort to make people to spend sufficiently. Besides, the problem might also be cultural influences: a blend of French political anti-Americanism and influential pretentiousness. (Trouble in le Royaume Magique: Over-expansion hurts Euro Disney) lot of explanations were put forth for Euro Disney's losses like some of the guests complained about the weather conditions, maintaining that such ventures work better in countries having more sunshine like the one at Florida.

There were others who objected to the exorbitantly high prices of the attractions and regional facilities like hotels or restaurants. Astonishingly, citizens of France did not visit them and it was the Germans and Englishmen who would land up here from their nations. Besides the sale of the Disney products like the Mickey souvenirs had very few takers, contrary to what was seen with the Americans. It might be such that the advertisement campaign was not effective.

(Dinechin, 1994) Cultural Differences: There was a lack of foresight on the part of Disney while planning to choose Euro Disney. The confidence of Disney was to some extent based on the number of Europeans visiting U.S. Disney parks. The Europeans would be visiting the parks based in U.S. As they were in America but not going to America with the specific motive to pay a visit to the parks. Therefore these figures do not exactly show the popularity of Disney theme parks in Europe.

The American Disney Parks are viewed as a part of the American experience and not as a complete holiday destination. All the predictions of attendance are based on parks inside the U.S. And Japan that is also much Americanized. (Euro Disney - Why it failed) Besides one more striking mistake on the cultural front has been the attention to the wrong details. There will be very few Europeans who will be paying attention to the leather wallpaper when they cannot get their normal breakfast or wine with their meals.

This appears to reveal that Disney was acting more on an American viewpoint of Europe rather than a regional view that could identify the vital cultural differences. Besides, the fear regarding offending the sophisticated European preferences implied that Disney forgot that their parks would always be viewed as a part of the American culture. Majority of the people enjoy the parks due to this reason and would choose a hamburger compared to a large sumptuous meal that would be usual for everyday at their home.

Euro Disney had the mistaken notion that the Europeans don't take breakfast which once again proved that no attention has been paid to the minute details of European cultures. While planning Euro Disney did not appear to have in place a contingency plan with the attitude towards consumer habits being unworried, no estimation of number of guests that would be visiting the park daily, the average period of night stay and their average spending. In America this might be more the case, as there is a theme park culture.

A lot of people desist visiting during peak holiday times, averaging the attendance figures throughout the year. The European market showed to be more erratic having sharp ups and downs in attendance figures. Everybody would anticipate huge gatherings during weekends and holidays. (Euro Disney - Why it failed) However, in their planning, Disney was more aligned in raking in profits compared to the basic details like provision of sufficient restrooms for the coach drivers.

Majority of the Europeans are not used to the habit of staying in a theme park and therefore the heavy investment in hotels appeared to be a big risk. Disney was wrongly treating Europe as one country while it embodies a much greater range of language and culture compared to the U.S. Or Japan. While the endeavor was to give the park a European taste, the advertising campaign was characteristically American. Majority of the advertisement are targeted at children whereas it's the adult's decision which is final regarding visit.

This is applicable in USA as Disney theme parks have been set up since long and it is the adults who associate the complete experience with childhood memories. However, in Europe, theme parks are not in vogue and thus a whole lot of marketing exercise is required to persuade people that Euro Disney is going to cross everybody's anticipation. A lot of factors were responsible for the failure because of the marketing and administration decisions taken prior to or after the launch of the park.

The entire concept of attempting to sell an American product to Europe while attempting to adapt some features of the park to cater to a large variety of cultural tastes was responsible for the failure of the project. Overconfidence in the erstwhile infallible Disney recipe implied that while planning the park, much attention was not paid to the larger details. In this aspect, the administrative fallacies in the project planning contributed a significant part for the failure.

The wrong marketing of Euro Disney was responsible for the poor visits however finally the park itself was never going to make the pioneering idea required to create a new market. (Euro Disney - Why it failed) There was intercultural arrogance on the part of Michael Eisner CEO of Disney in forcing "American" methods on the French people and failing to fathom the cultural differences.

They brought in ideas which were adversative to their expected customers and future employees, banning wine, at park restaurants and commanding about the staff dress code and behavior. Another failure was the inability to understand that labor unions in France contribute differently to the labor-management-governance equation compared to the United States, the idea of a vacation between the Europeans and Americans are poles apart, and that the French won't allow cultural intrusion and the like.

(Leverette; Neal, 2005) Michael Esiner and how he contributed to the initial failure of Euro Disney Eisner, the CEO of Disney failed to understand the underlying importance of relationships which is the building block of Disney over the years. He has positioned his personality at variance to what the principles of Walt Disney were cultivated over the years.

Eisner's primary idea of business was to be money making one and he overlooked the entertainment service and provides customer satisfaction, the core competence that a company like Disney was supposed to fulfill in order to be profitable. He was a difficult person to deal with not so notable personality and intelligence who ensured his rising through the corporate echelons by exploiting his contacts and his evident wealth. The personality of Eisner was in total contrast to what is demanded as the part of job requirement at Disney.

He lacked potential of knowing the needs of the consumer especially that of children, so it goes without saying that he failed to effectively launch Euro Disney at France. (Michael Eisner and the failure of Euro Disney -Paris in "Keys to the Kingdom") While launching a business, it is imperative to understand and be sensitive to the local culture which is one of the most essential factors responsible for the success of a business regardless of it being a local or global organization.

A company should always adhere to the maxim 'Think global, act local'. It is important to understand the targeted market so as to effectively provide the right blend of services which the particular market needs and requires. The fact remains that Eisner's indifferent sensitivity and overlooking the high regard.