EWA Award Winners 2025 Announced

(eap) For the 23^rd time, the European Waterpark Association (EWA) is presenting the prestigious EWA Awards. In 2025 as well, the European association of leisure pools and spas is recognizing innovative projects in offer and product design (EWA Professional Award), in marketing (EWA Marketing Award), and – since 2024 – also outstanding achievements in the field of sustainability (EWA Sustainability Award). In a two-stage selection process, the jury first selects a group of finalists from all applications received. From among the finalists, the winners in the three categories are then determined.

The EWA Professional Award 2025 for innovative offer design goes to the Rulantica water world in Rust, Germany. With the new 600-square-meter outdoor area “Svømmepøl”, the park has succeeded in reaching its planned capacity expansion to 7,000 guests per day. Designed as a Nordic volcanic landscape, the new pool area with its surrounding leisure spaces integrates seamlessly into Rulantica’s overall concept, which now comprises an outdoor area of 26,000 square meters. “Svømmepøl” offers many possibilities not only for leisure guests with its spacious beach, 660 square meters of water, a “Svømme Bar”, bubblers, and geysers. Beyond that, Rulantica is also opening the new area for regional public needs. At “Svømmepøl”, lane swimming is possible on the one hand, while on the other, swimming lessons for primary school children from the region are offered. In cooperation with the German Lifeguard Association (DLRG), children can earn their “Seahorse” swimming badges, and the new facility also serves as an internal training center for lifeguards and pool operations staff.

This year’s jury – consisting of Sonja Redies (Profund Consulting), Dr. Michael Quell (Aquapark Management), Prof. Dr. Torsten Widmann (DHBW Ravensburg) and Petra Probst (EAP Magazine) – decided to award two EWA Marketing Awards, as the applications focused on different target groups, namely (potential) employees and guests.

Spreewelten Employer Branding Campaign – EWA Marketing Award 2025 © Spreewelten

The Spreewelten in Lübbenau, following the guiding principle “Real people instead of models”, turned their own staff into brand ambassadors. With self-produced humorous videos, they created a stir not only in the pool sector. With this strong, attention-grabbing and precisely targeted employer branding campaign, Spreewelten succeeded in generating an unusually high number of applications for open positions. Furthermore, the so-called “Heroes Campaign”, which was broadcast across all social media channels, created lasting awareness for the product itself.

Thermengruppe Josef Wund's MyBLUPHORIA – EWA Marketing Award 2025 © Thermengruppe Josef Wund

The Thermengruppe Josef Wund with its facilities in Euskirchen, Titisee, and Sinsheim has taken the topic of digital guest journey to a new level with its Bluphoria app. The app combines services such as fast booking of tickets and treatments, including self check-in and check-out to avoid queues, with a “MyBLUPHORIA” loyalty program and immersive wellness offers in the app. With 170,000 MyBLUPHORIA members within one year, the number of members in the bonus program quadrupled compared to the previously marketed “Thermencard”. Both applications are honored with an EWA Marketing Award 2025.

Aqua Pink Wave Fashion Show at Aquasud – EWA Sustainability Award 2025 © Aquasud

The ambition to design a sustainable and thus future-oriented operation poses both a challenge and an opportunity for leisure pool operators, which is why the EWA introduced the EWA Sustainability Award for the first time last year. This award recognizes companies that dedicate themselves to sustainability in a variety of ways. The goal, as EWA Managing Director Dr. Klaus Batz explained, is to “look at the concept of sustainability from a holistic perspective and not limit it to measures of energy saving and reducing the CO₂ footprint, but also include, for example, aspects of diversity management.” The jury therefore decided by majority to present the EWA Sustainability Award this year to Aquasud in Differdange, Luxembourg. Aquasud – a modern water, fitness, and wellness center – developed a project concept for an “Aqua Pink Wave Fashion Show” – an inclusive fashion show where models with and without disabilities or people marked by chemotherapy appeared together as a matter of course. This special event was met with enthusiastic feedback from both guests and the media and is now set to take place regularly. “With this award, the jury explicitly wishes to encourage member pools of the European Waterpark Association to also apply in the future with ideas and concepts that may require less investment, but are nonetheless impressive in their impact,” explained Dr. Klaus Batz in outlining the jury’s decision.

All finalists and award winners will be honored during an official award ceremony at a festive dinner at KölnSKY in Cologne on October 29, 2025. EWA President Jutta Kleiber expressed her delight above all at the consistently high quality of the entries: “Whether they made it to the final round, won an award, or not – for us, all participating pools are winners.” ■