Getting Splash Happy

By Maryanne Murray Buechner/Scotrun

It takes more than a body slide to impress some jaded vacationers. One swoosh down Totem Tower at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, Va., and Andrew Lappas, 5, seemed bored. "I thought, Uh-oh, one run and we're done?" his father, Chris Lappas, 40, recalls with a laugh. Before long they discovered the indoor water park's longer, steeper tunnel slides--they start atop a four-story staircase and snake in and out of the cavernous hall into a plunge pool below--and Andrew was hooked. "We proceeded to go down about 25 more times," Lappas says. "By the end of the day, the kid was toast."

A happily worn-out 5-year-old is a highly desirable commodity in leisure travel these days, as indoor-water-park hotels, once unique to Wisconsin as an escape from the bone-chilling winters, spring up by the dozens across the U.S. "There's a real thirst for a family activity that's close to home, that's more than a trip to the movie theater," says PriceWaterhouseCoopers analyst Scott Berman. By adding indoor water parks to existing hotels or building new "destination" water-park resorts, hotel owners are attracting those families and in the process recharging business.

While smaller than their open-air counterparts, indoor water parks are still massive: 35,000 sq. ft. or larger, with elaborate networks of raft rides and body slides, plus fountains, wave pools and shallow areas for toddlers. Giant skylights bathe the parks in natural light by day; filtering systems constantly clean the water and pump in fresh air from outside. At Great Wolf, the indoor air temperature and the water are kept at a balmy 84DEGF, says CEO John Emery.

Those mechanics mean the facilities cost as much as $400 per sq. ft. to build--more than double the cost of an indoor pool. But a building boom is in full swing. In 2000 there were 24 indoor-water-park hotels and resorts in the U.S., all in the Midwest; by year's end there will be more than 100, with projects under way in Texas, Arizona, Kentucky and California. Holiday Inn is converting several of its aging "Holidome" franchises into indoor-water-park hotels, while even some Super 8 motels are installing small water parks.

What's the appeal? By bringing in families on the weekends, some hotels have increased their occupancy rates as much as 10% a year, about 10 times the industry average, reports consultant David Sangree. Room revenue also jumps, because an indoor water park adds as much as $100 to the nightly room rate. At Great Wolf, as at most of the parks, admission is exclusive to hotel guests, a selling point for some customers. "I'd always avoided outdoor water parks, because they're usually so dirty, and I worry about health issues," says Michelle Lappas, who came to Great Wolf in Virginia from Connecticut with her husband and son. "But I was comfortable. It was a nice crowd, and it was clean, and with lifeguards posted everywhere, I felt the kids were safe."

And as kids clamor for "just one more ride" before dinner, hotels are turning waiting parents into a new stream of revenue for the lobby cafes serving Starbucks coffee and nearby Aveda spas. At the busiest Great Wolf Lodge, in Scotrun, Penn., in the Pocono Mountains, guests sport wristbands with embedded radio-frequency chips that unlock their rooms and buy beer at the snack bar. Lappas called the $700 bill for the family's two-day stay "well worth it."

Even with year-round climate control, attendance at the indoor water parks spikes during school vacations, so smart operators are courting business travelers on weekdays, says water-park-industry consultant Bill Haralson. "Some hotels make the mistake of assuming that if you add a water park, your worries are over," he says. The Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells, for example, runs a 125,000-sq.-ft. indoor water park (the U.S.'s largest) and almost as much meeting and convention space. The Reno Hilton will reopen in 2007, as the Grand Sierra Resort, with a similar dual strategy.

Then again, perhaps the parks will find a way to unleash the 5-year-old in every road warrior. At the mouth of a slide called Coyote Cannon, a middle-aged father of two climbs onto an inner tube and disappears with a smile and a quip: "You check your dignity at the door."