Amusement park and resort chain Wonderla Holidays Ltd, plan to invest an additional ₹40 crores in resort projects to increase non-ticket revenues by the end of the next financial year, said Arun Chittilappilly, MD, Wonderla holidays.

“We are planning to add convention space, an adventure park and another 40 premium rooms to the resort to increase our non-ticket revenues. We are also refurbishing restaurants across all our parks. We hope to complete it in the next financial year,” Chittilappilly told businessline.

Non–ticket revenue continues to be the company’s focus going forward. Chittilappilly said, “We do a lot of events, festivals, carnivals, for example, in the fourth quarter, we have Holi, Women’s Day, Valentine’s Day. We engage in various activities to ensure we get many special bookings on those days.

The company is preparing to announce new projects in Indore and Mohali, while looking at also finalising something in the NCR region. The team is actively pursuing these three projects, with the expectation that one or two of them will be operational within the next year, said Chittilappilly.

Once Orissa Park is fully ready, the project team will relocate to one of these new locations.

Chittilappilly revealed that they have been approached by the UP government to do a park in Ayodhya but it’s not yet finalised. “We are prioritising NCR for now. But later, we might do a project in Ayodhya as well, because there seems to be a lot of potential,” he added.

Wonderla Holidays operates amusement parks in Kochi, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, along with a resort situated in Bangalore. 

Wonderla plans to hire 500 employees, including ground staff and the management for the new park in Bhubaneswar, which will be operational in the next six months. Chittilappilly said, “Our headcount has gone up by almost 60 people in the third quarter. As we are going to open a couple of new parks, recruitment will ramp up going forward.” Wonderla currently employs over 1000 people.

While discussing the decline in net profit in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year Chittilappilly explained that the reason for that is employee costs, which have gone up, due to recent hiring.

Chittilappilly said, “EBITDA margin has decreased due to increased sales promotion and marketing costs. Some contraction could happen in the going forward, because last year, we were not hiring, not making any investments. I think our margins are at the highest, we can expect a slight dip in margins until the new projects become operational, but I think revenue growth really compensates for that.”

The company is expecting small footfall growth or flat footfall in Q4. Chittilappilly said, “We are trying to improve our football. I think ARPU will increase in Q4. We are expecting that it will improve compared to Q3.”

Wonderla on February 8, 2024, reported a profit of ₹37.35 crore for the third quarter of FY24, down by 4.08 per cent compared with ₹38.94 crore for the same quarter last year. EBITDA for the Q3FY24 was ₹60.44 crore as against ₹61.01 crore for the same quarter last year. Its revenue from operations grew by 9.15 per cent to ₹123.55 crore from ₹113.19 crore in the same quarter of last year.

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