Published by: Nancy Patterson/Blooloop
Published date: March 2025

All right, water parkers, I took one for the team and read a ton of 2025 travel and trend articles, blogs, reports. Here is my opinion of what we might collectively consider.

Many water parks are being built, planned, talked about, renovated, and added to. Both of the indoor and the outdoor variety. But why? Yes, they are cheaper to build than a theme park, but they certainly aren’t inexpensive and frankly aren’t easy to finance (without a hotel attached). So what need are they fulfilling, and why are there so many plans in the works?

New water park plans & a different model

First, many developers and communities are planning multi-use entertainment complexes with diverse offerings designed to generate revenue. These complexes include water parks combined with hotels, restaurants, recreation centres, community facilities, sporting facilities, sports fields to create “Family Friendly Experiential Resorts” (per the brilliant minds at H&L Advisors).

So, while water parks are a keystone to these locations, they are not the only offering. And that’s a good thing. It keeps folks at a single destination for longer. As a part of a larger package (water park, hotel, food, sports, etc.), it also encourages expanded spending and longer stays.

This allows some lower revenue facilities to offset by higher revenue facilities. In other words, a community center or sports field can be offset revenue-wise by a hotel, and a water park.

These complexes are becoming popular in the US with private and public sector developers. Typically, they include hotels, retail establishments, F&B, water parks, arcades, and possibly sporting facilities (basketball, hockey) or sports fields (soccer, football, baseball).

In Europe, these water park complexes also include a larger variety of hotel/RV/camping styles, spas, wellness centres, amphitheatres, event grounds and more.

So what travel trends are likely to encourage more development in this sector, and where can water parks focus their efforts in the future?

Three key travel trends that water parks should know about

We all know travel trends don’t actually change like fashion. What’s here this year is not gone the next as it relates to travel. Frankly, many of us rely on friends and family for recommendations: ‘Where did you go? Did you like it? Was the food good? Where did you stay? And most importantly, what did you do there?’

Did your friends go somewhere this year and come home to rave about their fabulous vacation? Chances are, it may be added to your future list of places to go.

The internet has a wealth of articles and trend reports, some of which are obvious and useless, and some have some interesting insights. Without delving into a litany of facts and figures, let’s summarize a few key trends and then see how we might collectively react or plan around these trends in the future, if at all.

The top three overlapping themes for general travel and family travel are sustainable and eco-conscious choices, tech-driven travel and tech integration in travel and travel planning, and wellness and adventure tourism. For families, several articles say the latter includes skill building.

Eco-conscious travel

Surprise-surprise, the climate has changed how folks think about their global impact. Things like nature, carbon footprint, community, offsetting, preservation, and being responsible for the planet are now clickable, intentional choices made during booking.

Any facility that has taken a stance, shared its intentions, and is trying to do “better” with tangible identifiable actions will rank as a higher-value travel option.

The days of ignoring the climate and your facilities’ impact on the environment are gone. We all have to make decisions that matter during planning, design, operations, now and for the future, whether it’s the food you serve (farm to table), the way you construct your facility, (shameless plug; aluminum with an open roof!), save energy (again: open the roof!), recycle or integrate those awful paper straws.

Regardless of what you do, you must start somewhere and do something guests can see and/or be told about.

Travellers around the globe looking for these more sustainable travel locations are (shockingly) using technology to plan their adventures! While this seems obvious, what’s interesting is that some of those eco-savvy travellers are using AI to make their plans.

AI data centres produce massive carbon emissions and use an enormous volume of water for cooling. The impact of AI on the environment is not yet fully understood. While it’s likely to help address some of our climate concerns, it will also cause a few. But that’s an article for another day.

Tech-driven travel

AI aside, what is interesting about technology-driven travel is that while you can personalize itineraries to plan the trip, the demand for personalized service and convenience once you’ve arrived at your destination is a clear opportunity for the water park sector.

It is in this area that facilities can harness the benefits of seamless payments for multiple activities, bookings, reservations, queue lines, lockers, hotel rooms and more from the privacy of one’s personal device. There are advertising, future bookings and upselling that the industry can take advantage of.

Everyone is already on the tech bandwagon. But there is likely more your water park can do to make the trip easier and more convenient for guests.

Wellness and adventure

Lastly, the W word. Wellness (and adventure) travel has been an industry buzz word for the last ten plus years with good reason.

As we plan our travel, we also need and want to reset, refresh, and take a break from the day to day. Between global chaos, the cost of living, kids, families, aging, politics, you name it, life has become more and more stressful from our instant access to more information that we may or may not want to hear to the reality of life around us.

Any opportunity someone has for either a little quiet time, some R&R or a bit of a party is a welcome change of scene. No matter how the travellers roll, loudly or quietly, there is an opportunity for water parks to provide something for everyone.

Implementing spas, wellness, restaurants, bars, surfing, climbing, lessons, activity pools, games, etc. brings an element of all of the above to a water park-based destination. Consider quiet zones, areas for relaxation. Why can’t you sit in a lounge chair and watch a movie in a water park?

With these three overlapping trends for travellers of any age, there is a lot of opportunity for water parks to meet vacationers’ current and future needs. We are part of a larger entertainment sector. So, complimentary offerings with other facilities as part of a one-stop destination are key.

What travel trends might water parks be missing out on?

Slow travel, dark sky tourism, cultural immersion and detour destinations come up a lot when talking about trends. This means being in nature, away from the bright lights of big cities, being in a community that’s off the beaten path or travelling to alternate destinations that aren’t the “main” town or destination. Think Cornwall, not London, for a UK vacation.

So this is an opportunity to plan parks in non-mainstream destinations. Take advantage of being in a place where you can offer fun and games at the water park hotel with relevant amenities, but travellers can also spend time hiking, bird watching or whatever they choose off the beaten path.

A few other fun trends that can be harnessed are set-jetting and cool locations. For instance, travelling to New Zealand to see where The Lord of the Rings was filmed, or Morocco for Gladiator. These might be destinations where new experiential resorts can be developed.

Cool locations are heavily tied to global warming trends. Folks are looking to ski or travel to places with cooler temperatures.

The Jay Peak Pump House water park at Jay Peak Mountain in Vermont was one of the early ski-in and swim locations, with a water park built on the side of the mountain. Parks could think about adding cold plunges, ice baths, and various trending activities that might capture the essence of these cooler climates.

Consider developing or adding highly themed immersive environments, water cinemas, and underwater experiences to your water park. Aquascope in Chasseneuil-du-Poitou, France, is the clear leader of this trend in its beautifully immersive water park.

While trends and trending concepts are fickle, they also last. What are you doing in your water parks to capitalize on what the travel trends are saying?