Lions Water park closes for the season. Managers report profits and future plans
Profits and attendance were up at the Lions Water Adventure Park in Kinston.
The Kinston/Lenoir County Department of Parks and Recreation shared their 2021 successes with the Lions Water Adventure park at the Kinston City Council meeting held on Nov. 16.
Kinston/Lenoir County Park and Recreation Director Corey Povar and Swim Club Management Group Executive Vice President Zach Brown also took this opportunity to present their plans for the upcoming year.
Overall profits in the year 2021 came to $260,000, a stark contrast compared to 2020’s $50,000 with a nearly 40% increase from 2019’s overall totals.
This increase came largely from ticket sales.
More people came to the park this year than in 2019, many of whom were out-of-state visitors. This info came from data gained by using TicketingHub, which made the ability to cater to parkgoers more efficient and helped with providing more detailed data on customers compared to previous years.
The City of Kinston also shuttled children from Emma Webb Pool and from the Holloway Recreation Center to the park, which helped with boosting attendance.
The park’s greatest successes this year came from partnerships that were made with small businesses in the community, Brown said.
One of these was with Sugar Hill Pizzeria, who operated the concession stands. The continuing collaboration with Davis Cleaning Service greatly helped with battling the spread of COVID-19.
Tickets were also made this year for guests to use for entry at certain times during opening hours, which allowed staff to monitor attendance and prevent overcrowding.
Despite the impact that COVID-19 has had on the park’s ability to operate, fans of the park can look forward to more community engagement next year. Because of the increase of guest attendance, the public can expect more ticket packages, which will include lower ticket prizes.
Changes will be made based on the survey results that come from customers. When asked by the City Council members about their plans Brown admitted to already having plenty of ideas.
“We want to maximize (the use of our) capacities, whether it bring in large groups during the evenings, mornings (or) weekends, or enhance things like birthday packages,” Brown said. “We are certainly going to utilize the market data that we have to see what we can do to continuously improve the facility as a whole, and see what the market are telling us that they want to see.”
The park’s management team also want to provide greater hospitality and benefits to their employees, many of whom are college students. Employee retention has reportedly not increased since last year.
Given the seasonal nature of their jobs, and the fact that many employees have to travel hundreds of miles to return home to Kinston each summer, employees are not presumed to return regardless of added pay increases.
The current overall job and consumer market in Lenoir County was determined to be difficult in mapping out going forward into the new year, another situation that has influenced management’s insistence on ensuring employee retention.
Brown said that they plan to address this.
“We want to look at what other offerings we can have in order to entice [workers] and maintain moving in to 2022”, Brown said, during the meeting.
Swim Club staff have reportedly reached out to various colleges to speak to the professors who teach their employees with the hopes of catering to them and ensuring that financial care will be provided for them to return home.
“About eighty-five percent of the employees that are working with the facility are local to Kinston”, Brown said. “We know that [in order] to be competitive and to continue to make sure that we are providing that good [employment] standard, we may need to look at adjusting those things. We are confident that we’ll see a very good return rate.”
This article originally appeared on Kinston/Jones Free Press: Lions Water Adventure Park in Kinston had profits for 2021 season
