By Jess Ponting
Something was different at Surf Park Summit this year. Everyone there could feel it. People were talking about it. Summit always has great vibes, it has become a meeting place of friends old and new who share the same vision. A place where groups needing project partners seek out and find those partners. Participants tell us it is their favorite conference of the year. But this year, this year felt undeniably different and it wasn’t just the sell out attendance level (though that was part of it).
I’ve been reflecting on what was different and what it means.
- Real progress, new projects, new faces.
2024 has seen some genuine progress. By the end of the year, there will have been nine new commercial surf parks open using seven different wave generation technologies (Endless Surf, Wavegarden, Surfloch, Swell MFG, KSWaveCo, Citywave, UNIT Surf) and one full-scale test facility for a new technology that uses a giant submerged pillow to make waves (AllWaves). We expect at least another 12 commercial projects to open before the end of 2026 representing 150% growth in global surf park inventory in just three years. In addition to this, five new surf park projects were announced live at Surf Park Summit along with a new powerhouse consulting partnership.
Surf Park Central put significant time, effort and resources into widening the pool of Surf Park Summit attendees this year. Summit regulars reported having multiple significant conversations and building new relationships as a result. New industries are taking an active interest in the space and are bringing new technologies and cost savings into the mix. Agru and VVater are great examples of this.
- Growing pool of experienced experts willing to help others.
As new surf parks open and mature, so too the level of expertise from within the surf park industry grows and matures. Surf Park Summit is changing from an event based on best guesses, passion, and dreams to one based on experience, numbers, and a collaborative spirit of sharing both successes and failures. While the surf park space emerged from a primordial soup of inter-technology suspicion and paranoia, at the urging of multiple keynote speakers and panelists from more mature industries like heli-cat skiing and water parks, the tone has shifted to one of more open collaboration where challenges and failures can be openly discussed.
At the beseechment of other similar industries, the awareness appears to be dawning that surf parks are not each other’s competition. Rather competing uses of discretionary time and money are the competition at hand. When a surf park wins that competition against other uses of discretionary time and money, all surf parks win. The openness that stems from this collective realization elevated talks and discussion across this year’s Surf Park Summit. Added to that the emergence of genuinely expert and experienced consulting teams lending their hard-won first-hand surf park experience to new entrants into the space added a sense of security for first time developers.
- Major focus on financing projects – many new investors.
Our push to bring new faces into the Surf Park Summit family this year was largely focused on investors and real estate developers. We had a good number of both attend and a number of panels and presentations dedicated to finance, populated by folks who have already financed surf parks including some emerging alternatives like tax-free municipal bonds and structured crowdsourcing via fractional ownership. Surf Park Summit has moved beyond the lamentation of funding woes to active investors and alternative finance strategies that have already worked in practice.
- Surf Park Sharks
The brainchild of SPC partner Chris Kluesener, Surf Park Sharks was a wildly successful addition to this year’s Surf Park Summit. Essentially a pitch competition for surf park developers, the competition attracted more than 20 entrants from around the world. The field was narrowed to 6 and these six presented live in front of a packed house to 6 judges (active surf park investors) who collectively manage more than $22 billion in assets. The participating projects offered unprecedented levels of transparency into their concepts, business plans, budgets, pro forma assumptions and profit projections – feedback focussed on not only the excitement this generated but also how much was learned from watching a series of pitches back to back that were each followed by feedback and questions from highly qualified surf park investors.
- Growing sophistication & understanding of successful business models
The addition of new investors, developers, real estate developers and specialist consultants along with the growing experience of existing developers and operators equated to a leveling up of content at the 2024 Surf Park Summit. In particular frank assessments of surf park business models based on real examples demonstrated a growing sophistication among the surf park development family. New and deep explorations of the importance of real estate components to project viability and the existing successes and potential for private club models linked to residential real estate. The importance of winning over local community and political support through authentic sustainability messaging and open communication is also featured in this work.
What does it all mean? It means our industry is maturing. Not just growing, or positioning for explosive growth, but getting real. From having to figure out how to build a surf park from the ground up we now have people in our industry who have done it multiple times and understand which business models suit which demographics and geographies, and how to access the capital required to get the job done. Even better, we are now more open than ever to sharing expertise to ensure everyone succeeds. The team at Surf Park Central is delighted to have played a small role in facilitating this evolution and we are completely dedicated to continue to find ways to support and help our industry to build ‘smile factories’ and ‘temples of stoke’ around the world.
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