Save the Date: October 26–28, 2027 · Palm Springs area, California
Surf Park Summit 2027 is heading to the Coachella Valley: an intuitively unlikely emerging center of the surf park world, and perhaps the most interesting surf park zip code on the planet. Nowhere else outside of São Paulo can you see different wave technologies, business models and surf-anchored real estate strategies operating within a short drive of one another. For an industry that learns by comparing notes, it’s an ideal setting.
This Surf Park Summit will be our most ambitious yet. Here’s a snapshot of just some of the new and evolving elements we are planning:
• Site visits to DSRT Surf and Palm Springs Surf Club. Two different wave technologies and two wildly different approaches to surf-anchored hospitality and real estate.
• A golf tournament. We’ll be in Palm Springs, after all – a brand-new destination where the surf hits the turf. More to the point, is there a better setting than a couple of hours in a golf cart to get to know a future capital, development or vendor partner? Lodge your interest early, as spaces will be limited.
• Expanded workshops and industry committee meetings. More working sessions for developers and operators, and more time and space for various committees to advance their agendas and support the industry.
• An expanded vendor hall. We are streamlining pricing, investing in more space, and driving new attendees, particularly the exponentially expanding developer pipeline and the emerging amenitized real estate developer community looking to buy what our partners are selling.
Programming, pricing and registration details will follow. In the meantime, register your interest on the Summit page to get first dibs on early-bird tickets, sponsorship, golf registration, workshop registration, committee registration, and speaking opportunities.
INSIDERS, rebuilt from the ground up
For most of this industry’s short history, developers have made major capital decisions with remarkably little shared data: a handful of early pro formas, vendor projections and whatever operators were willing to share over a drink at the Summit. The data drought was real, and it cost people money.
That’s changing. We’ve reached a critical mass of operating parks (ten opened in 2026 alone), enough to aggregate and anonymize performance data at scale. Operators are tracking sessions with AI-driven cameras, wave technology companies hold millions of logged rides, and thousands of surfers are telling us what they want, what they’ll pay and how far they’ll travel.
For INSIDERS members, this opens the door to types of data and analysis that were simply impossible to produce until recently: utilization patterns drawn from real sessions across multiple regions, consumer research at a scale no single operator could field, and real estate analysis that measures what a surf park does to the value of the property around it. So we’ve rebuilt INSIDERS around one idea: the best surf park decisions are made with the best surf park data.
We’re working hard to make the most of that opportunity. Our partnership with Flowstate has already produced aggregated, cross-regional utilization data from real surf park sessions, and since that data went public at Summit 2026, several other organizations have reached out about contributing their own. Our partnership with Chris Dorociak of Paramount Economics has produced a first-of-its-kind quarterly analysis of surf-anchored real estate. And we’re in active conversations to forge new partnerships with operators, technology providers and researchers that would bring brand-new types of real surf park operations data to our members, always aggregated and anonymized.
Developers who underwrite on real demand curves give lenders more confidence. Operators who benchmark against peers fix problems faster. And when fewer projects stumble, the whole asset class becomes easier to finance. A rising tide, as they say. Surf Park Central’s job is to be the place where that data comes together, and INSIDERS is how we do it.
The new INSIDERS is a research and intelligence membership for the people who build, finance and run surf parks. Here’s what’s inside:
• Exclusive research reports from Surf Park Central and our research partners, released throughout the year
• Audio editions of the Summit’s best sessions, built for your commute or your next flight
• Quarterly INSIDERS Updates (launching soon): live briefings with new data from SPC and our partners, plus Q&A
• The video archive of Surf Park Summit and INSIDERS content, going all the way back to 2013
• Industry committees and a direct line into the people shaping standards for the sector
What’s already landed (and what’s coming)
The reports
2026 Surf Park Consumer Trends and Utilization Report. Our annual deep dive into who’s surfing at parks, how often, how far they’ll travel and when they convert to members. One finding operators keep circling: membership and bundle purchases climb sharply once a customer hits roughly 5 to 11 lifetime visits. That’s your conversion window. Are you designing for it? (For a public taste, read New Data Shows That Surf Park Demand Is Quietly Evolving and The Operational Challenge of Evolving Surf Park Demand.)
Demand Meets Delivery: Global Adoption Psychology and Regional Performance in the Surf Park Industry. Built with Flowstate, this report pairs the largest surf park consumer dataset ever assembled (a global survey of 4,311 surfers) with aggregated, real-world session data from parks across Europe, Asia/Oceania and North America. Teasers:
• Intermediate sessions are the largest behavioral segment on the demand side and the most consistently well-utilized session type on the supply side
• Elite surfers may be a smaller market than you think, with clear differences between regions
• Six statistically significant predictors of surf park adoption
• Four behavioral segments of surf park users, each profiled in detail
The Paramount Surf Report: Surf Park Real Estate Conditions, North America, 3Q2026. From our research partner Chris Dorociak of Paramount Economics, this is the first quarterly look at what surf parks do to surrounding real estate. It’s updated every quarter and available exclusively to INSIDERS. Read our interview with Chris: The Real Estate Opportunity Behind Surf Parks.
Safety white papers. Three white papers on surf park safety by Ashley Presser.
The audio
If you missed Virginia Beach, or were too busy networking to take notes, in demand sessions in audio, transcript, and report form from the 2026 Industry Insights Stage are now available as audio for INSIDERS, including:
• Energy: From Cost Line to Revenue Line with James Miles
• Surf-Anchored Real Estate: how surf parks are driving residential value
• Wave Programming & Yield Optimization: turning sessions, pricing and demand into revenue
• Five Sacred Principles of Surf-Driven Design from AO
• Capital Strategies to Fund Your Surf Park
• It’s Not the Wave, It’s the Weekend: designing hospitality around surf-anchored real estate
• The Liquid Anchor: the rise of Wavegarden-anchored real estate developments
• Cole Cannon’s keynote
• The Technology Lightning Round: rapid-fire pitches from Wavegarden, Endless Surf, Surfloch, Aquatic Development Group, Flowsurf, Elevate Surf, Surf Pill, All Waves, Okahina Wave, Surf Center and The Swell
More are on the way.
New: Quarterly INSIDERS Updates
Reports are great. But this industry moves faster than an annual publishing cycle, so we’re launching Quarterly INSIDERS Updates: live, one-hour briefings where Surf Park Central and our research partners present fresh data and take your questions.
The first briefing is being planned to feature:
• Chris Dorociak, Paramount Economics: the latest quarter of surf park real estate data
• Flowstate: what millions of tracked rides say about utilization and session design
• Me: new consumer trends data from our ongoing research program
And we’re working with more partners to bring new datasets to the table. Every update will be recorded and added to the archive, so you never miss a quarter.
The archive: every Summit session since 2013
Here’s something no one else can offer: the video record of this industry’s evolution. INSIDERS unlocks the full Surf Park Summit and INSIDERS video archive, going all the way back to 2013, when surf parks were still largely concepts on paper.
Watch the pioneers predict what would happen, then check whether they were right. See which design and business-model assumptions held up and which didn’t. It’s a record of what works, what doesn’t and why.
Why INSIDERS is the cheapest insurance in this industry
Let’s do some napkin math. A surf park is a tens-of-millions-of-dollars bet. A single bad call on wave mix, session design, pricing or site selection can cost more than a lifetime of memberships in the first month. INSIDERS is $299 a year.
For that, you get:
• Data you can’t get anywhere else. Consumer research at a scale no single operator can field, paired with real operating data and real estate economics.
• Data that stays current. Quarterly updates mean you’re working from this quarter’s numbers, not last year’s guesswork.
• Twelve-plus years of hindsight. The full archive lets you learn from other people’s expensive mistakes instead of making your own.
• A seat at the table. Committees and partners where the industry’s standards and benchmarks are being built right now.
If you’re a developer, it sharpens your pro forma. If you’re an operator, it shows you where you stand. If you’re an investor, it’s the due diligence head start you’ve been waiting for. And if you’re a supplier, it tells you what your customers will need next.
The industry is finally getting the data it deserves. Make sure you’re on the inside.
Join INSIDERS today · Register your interest for Surf Park Summit 2027
See you in the desert in ‘27.
Jess Ponting, CEO, Surf Park Central
