Germany: Holiday Park Announces to Build Own Waterpark

For several years now, there has been a vision for the Plopsa Holiday Park located in Haßloch, Rhineland-Palatinate, to add a water park offer for visitors (read also our last published article on the further development of the Holiday Park in EAP issue 3/2021). Again and again, the Belgian operating group Plopsa sought dialogue with the municipality to play through various options regarding a leisure pool offer. One possibility, for example, was to jointly develop the existing family pool operation (Badepark) in Haßloch. However, after no agreement was reached and the local council even decided recently to build a new municipal indoor swimming pool facility on the site of the Badepark, Holiday Park now announced that it will go ahead with its plans to build its own water park next to the entrance of Holiday Park.

“Our management board would like to drive growth in Germany as quickly as possible. The financial resources for this have been available for some time. However, we wanted to keep our door open and wait for the decision of the Haßloch municipality,” said Steve Van den Kerkhof, CEO of the Plopsa Group. “Together with the hotel, for which the approval process has just started, the water park will be another perfect building block for the development towards a multi-day destination.” Bernd Beitz, Director Germany and responsible for the Holiday Park, added, “We very much regret that the cooperation between the Holiday Park and the municipality does not materialize. With our offer, we presented the economic alternative to the new construction of a bathing facility, from which all four sides, the municipality, Holiday Park, the taxpayers and the citizens of Haßloch would have benefitted. Right from the start, we also pursued our plans for our own water park without the participation of the municipality.”

As soon as construction of the hotel starts, in a next step Holiday Park (which, by the way, turned 50 years in 2021) will submit a building application for the waterpark. Plans call for a themed indoor area of around 4,000 square meters with a wave pool with thunderstorm effects, a wild river, several children’s pools, a water playground, various whirlpools, several slides and a sports pool, as well as an outdoor area with another pool open all year round. (eap)