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An order qualifier is a characteristic of a product or service that is required in order for the
product/service to even be considered by a customer. An order winner is a characteristic that will win the bid or customer's purchase (Slack, 2009, P.49). According to the definition, Order Qualifiers for Disneyland Resort Paris at the time of its opening were rides, quality, design, restaurants, landscaping and infrastructure. Order winners were The Walt Disney s expertise in innovative and imaginative rides, superior guest service, visitors and employees participation as guests and cast members, Disney s clean cut image and heritage of Disney characters. There were not many large amusement parks in Europe in 1990s. Euro Disney had to compete primarily with European destinations which were rich in art, culture and history like Italy, Rome, London and many other places (www.blackwellpublishing.com). Euro Disney was expected to achieve a high level of capacity utilization because of its fantastic heritage and strategic location. Walt Disney had expertise in innovative rides which were related to one of the Disney characters. It was very unique to Disney as its characters like Mickey Mouse, Hannah Montana and many others were very popular in the world. Disney had a great reputation for their excellent customer service. The uniqueness of Euro Disney was the combination of history, fantasy and adventure, in which the guest would be a participant as well as a spectator. Its theme is showcased in all rides, attractions, costumes of employees, the design of the land, hotel and throughout the park. After the phenomenal success in TOKYO, The Walt Disney Company was confident of replicating the same story in Paris. To continue the legacy the operations strategy of Euro Disney was to create the optimum blend of Disney s traditional appearances, values and preferences of European visitors. The operations strategy means the outlook by which the firm uses its resources to achieve its competitive goals. Euro Disney s operations strategy included the strategic location of the park, maintaining the Disney s reputation of Magic , high level of customer serviceand continue with the tradition of Walt Disney s focus on creating images, products and experiences for customers that symbolize fun, imagination and service. The operations strategy can be further illustrated as:

Mission: Increasing growth through innovative marketing and sales effort as a multiyear investment programme

Competitive Priority : New and innovative rides,blend of Disney's heritage and European preferences

Location near Paris. accessible to large population

Variety in Restaurants. Cater to all European Visitors

Diversions for people waiting in the queue

Focus on European heritage of Disney's characters

Euro Disney modified its park s design to focus on tradit onal European and Western American structure. i It attempted to upgrade the quality and variety of the food and created theme based hotels. It did not attempt to change its service delivery system as it, even after protests, refused to modify its grooming standards, making the park alcohol free and adding extra diversions for long queuing. The above

menti ned features confirm that irres ecti e of all the protests Disney considered its guest ser ice values and the par s design (theme lands innovative rides attractions hotels characters etc.) to be core to its concept and were the drivers of its operations strategy.

2. Disney Company s target mar et in Europe was very much different from U.S and Tokyo besides park
being meant for all ages. Euro Disney targeted multinational customer base causing the requirement of altering design, multilingual employees and understanding different behaviour of different nationalities. The location of Euro Disney in Paris was finali ed after considering other locations like Spain, Germany, Italy or Britain. As stated at Page 79 of the textbook, the location criteria are based on these five categories a) Capi al R quir m The capital or leasing cost of a site is usually a significant factor in identifying location. The proposed site s demographics with the financial incentives confirmed the right sets of condition for a theme park. The park was in the proximity to a metropolitan area and space for expansion; the high population of Paris (10 million) and Europe (330 million) provided a large customer base with great infrastructures. Due opening of Euro Tunnel, the French autoroutes network and the TGV network was also one of the factors in favour of this location. b) Mark Fac r Location of a firm is primarily dependent on its market place. Paris is one of the highly visited places mainly because of its culture, art and heritage. Paris is already a tourist destination with excellent air, road and rail links with the rest of Europe. Also some of the critics were not happy about Euro Disney coming to Paris. By globali ing its peculiar blend of Adam Smith and the Wild West, America is putting a distinctively individualistic consumerist stamp on world culture- turning its own type of modernity into a global model (Taylor 1996) . The location near Paris was also considered because of the availability of labour. c) Cost Factors: Costing is one of the integral functions in choosing a location. The cost of setting up was very much high as it was on the outskirts of the city. Labours or so called cast members were paid salary higher than the minimum wages. The local farmers were not happy as their land was acquired by the government. It was offered many financial incentives from the National and Local government of France. The government offered to invest in local infrastructure, reduce the VAT (Value Added Tax) rate on goods sold in the park, valuation of land low to reduce taxes and provide subsidi ed loans. They were offered an incentive of around FF 6.0 billion. (Finnery, 1996). d) Futur Fl xibility: For effective operations flexibility is one of the important factors. The construction of the Euro Disney Park was to be done in phases. After completion of phase 1, there was ample space and infrastructure for its expansion. The park had also the ability to add new rides and attractions as was evident with the addition of new rides, hotels and attractions in subsequent years. e) Risk factors: Evaluating the risks attached to a location is the most important criteria while evaluating a location. The Euro Disney was subject to risks like climate, dining facilities, different nationalities, criticism and long-term risk of currency rates, property prices etc. Europeans have a strong preference of eating food at specific times. The restaurants tend to be busiest at these specific times. Different nationalities also acted differently. There was protest from local Frenchmen as they cried of Euro Disney damaging their culture. There was lots of criticism as well from different intellectuals. The former secretary of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called the Euro-Disney near Paris a Cultural Chernobyl, while a less despondent wag was considered it a Trojan Mouse ( Ceaser 1997: 8,251) The above mentioned points suggest that the Euro Disney was different from all the previous ventures of Disney Company. The diversity of maintaining the perfect cultural balance makes planning more difficult, at least in the short run, as critics, banks, vacationers, locals and the shareholders anticipate the MAGIC from the first day. The decision to locate near Paris was strategically correct as has been explained above, but besides location there were many other factors which were instrumental in the sluggish start of Euro Disney.
 

3. The Disney Company s focus was to align the strategic decision to its objectives. The objective of transferring the Disney concept to France where its core was superior service, may imply changes to either the fundamental composition of the park or the service delivery system. The operations strategy and the objectives were made conducive to have the legacy of DISNE and the marketability of Euro Disneyland. The Walt Disney Company has always believed in superior customer service and quality of their rides. They have a strict Human Resource Management system. They always hired cast members who maintain a high level of courtesy and work performance. Their obsession of innovative and quality rides was evident with the introduction of new rides in the subsequent years. The rides had European adaptations to meet the local taste and preferences. The park, hotels and the themes were modified in order to FIT between the requirements of the market and the capabilities of operations resources (Slack, 2009, Page 52).
Disney always ensured that the customers queries are answered in the minimum possible time. The queuing time was cut by 45% through new attractions and new advertising campaigns (www.blackwellpublishing.com).The park had bilingual signposts along with visual cues so that the visitors or Participants can locate easily. They always pioneered the new and innovative rides to relate to one of the Disney characters. The landscape, architecture, themes, dining facilities, cast costumes and dcor were all designed to showcase the theme of the Park . They gave the park the makeover which focused on European heritage of many of the Disney characters. For example: Cinderella in a French inn and Themes on Leonardo Da Vinci (http://www.disneylandparis.co.uk) After few years of the opening of the park, with the completion of the connection between London and Marne-La-Valle along with a TGV link, there was improvement in the attendance. The DISNE VILLA was now better connected to major European cities. In spite of incurring losses in the initial years, the rumour of it on being on the verge of bankruptcy was overcome by restructure of the loans by the banks and backers. Euro as a prefix was replaced in the name as it was associated with not positive image. On top of that, the new name Disneyland Resort Paris signified the romantic image of the city of Paris (www.blackwellpublishing.com). Euro Disney approached the task which had never been attended in either of Disney s locations. The complex diversity coupled with European recession, drop in property prices, cheap dollar and the Atlantic fare war added to the wound of Euro Disney (www.businessweek.com/archives). The subsequent years, in which new rides were added, phase 2 was approved, loans were restructured and the connection between London and Marne-la-Valle was built, showed encouraging signs even after 10 percent fall in attendance of participants , maybe because of previous financial problems. But now Disneyland Resort Paris has got Mickey ruling over the Magical Kingdom as in 2009 it had 15.4 million visits, 53 attractions, 5800 hotel rooms and hosted 1000 s of business event (www.corporate.disneylandparis.com).

Bibliography:
Ceaser, James W. 1997, Reconstructing America: The symbol of America in Modern Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Disneyland Resort Paris, The Narrative of Numbers , < http://corporate.disneylandparis.com/aboutour-company/the-narrative-of-numbers/index.xhtml > [assessed 6 November 2010] Grant, Robert M. (2002), Euro Disney: From Dream to Nightmare, 1987-94, Case 14, [online]. Available from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/grant/docs/14EuroDisney.pdf [assessed 01 November 2010] John D. Finnery. 1996, Project Financing: Asset-Based Financial Engineering, Case Study, John Wiley & Sons.

Slack, N., Chamber, S., Johnston, R., and Betts, A. (2009). Operations and Process Management: Principles and Practice for Strategic Impact.2nd ed. Italy: Pearson Education Taylor, Peter J. 1996.The Way the Modern World Works: World Hegemony to World Impasse. Chichester: Wiley Toy, Stewart and Oster, Patrick, The Moore isn t roaring , <http://www.businessweek.com/archives/1992/b328032.arc.htm> [assessed 29 October 2010]

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