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The Kiessling family’s 50 years of fun on the Canary Islands

As Loro Parque celebrates its 50th anniversary, Christoph Kiessling talks to blooloop about developments here and at his family’s other attractions in the Canary Islands, Siam Park and Poema del Mar

It’s difficult to escape the presence of either Loro Parque or Siam Park in Tenerife, even if you don’t visit either of these multiple award-winning attractions. But many visitors to this Spanish territory, roughly 1,000km west of Morocco, do. Together the two parks welcome around 2.5 million visits in a typical year.

Loro-Parque-Siam-Park-Advertising

Located respectively in the north and south of the largest Canary Island, the animal park and water park are the Kiessling family’s life work. Travel around Tenerife and you’ll see advertisements for them everywhere. From bus stops to billboards, taxis to tourist offices, and even on litter bins.

The world’s best park – with or without water!

Siam Park was named Tripadvisor’s best water park in the world every year since 2014. And even though the category has now been merged with best amusement park, it emerged victorious again earlier this year, ahead of second place Puy du Fou.

Both Siam Park and Loro Parque, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, feature extensive Siam theming. The one-time Asian kingdom comprised what is now Thailand, as well as parts of Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. With original buildings designed and built by Thai craftsmen using authentic materials, the popular parks offer more than simply theming pastiche.

Wolfgang Kiessling Royal Thai Embassy, Madrid
Wolfgang and Christoph Kiessling meet with the Ambassador of Thailand to Madrid, Her Excellency Phantipha Iamsudha Ekarohit, in May 2021 on the occasion of Wolfgang’s retirement from the role of Honorary Consul-General of Thailand to the Canary Islands. Image courtesy of the Royal Thai Embassy, Madrid

So immersed in Siam culture has the Kiessling family, originally from Germany, become that Wolfgang Kiessling, Loro Parque’s founder, served as the Canary Islands’ honorary consul-general to Thailand for 26 years until late 2021. His son Christoph, currently vice-consul, will eventually take over the duty.

Loro Parque: Animal Embassy

When Wolfgang, who turns 85 this September, launched Loro Parque (Parrot Park) outside Puerto de la Cruz in 1972, it was purely a bird park. They are still its main inhabitants, and their chirping provides a continual soundtrack to the first of our two conversations with Christoph Kiessling at the family’s home/office complex inside the park.

However, guests are now welcomed to what is described as an ‘Animal Embassy’. So what does that mean?

Christoph Kiessling
Christoph Kiessling

“My father came up with it,” says 53-year-old Christoph, the company’s vice-president. “One of the ignorances of humankind is to believe we are the only ones who are intelligent and can communicate. All animals talk. You only have to look at the skin, their eyes, their smile. The animals we have here at Loro Parque are happy animals in a controlled environment and can talk for the species in the wild.”

The team at Loro Parque is careful not to use the word ‘captivity’. During a tour of the Planet Penguin exhibit, one of the largest of its kind in the world, communications director Natalya Romashko points out a map highlighting the 63 current animal welfare and biodiversity projects of the Loro Parque Fundación.

Ten per cent of ticket sales at Loro Parque, Siam Park and also Poema del Mar, the Kiessling family’s aquarium on the neighbouring Canary Island of Gran Canaria, goes towards the foundation, which supports projects in 35 countries.

Monkey business at Loro Parque

A second free-flying aviary is currently under construction to complement Loro Parque’s existing 1,400 square metre bird habitat, which is home to 160 birds of 34 species. Only a few old birdcages remain. Other residents of the park include lions, monkeys, red pandas, meerkats, anteaters, tortoises, alligators, dolphins, sea lions and orcas. Younger guests can even ride an orca roller coaster in Kinderlandia.

Loro Parque_Animal Embassy

Christoph Kiessling explains how the park’s animal collection grew back in the 1980s. “The mayor called my father and said, ‘Wolfgang, I have confiscated the chimps from the street photographers. Once they stop being babies, they get more active, so the photographers start doping them. You are the only person I know who can handle these creatures.’

“As we diversified, we saw the other species got more attention than the parrots.”

Nowadays Loro Parque covers a surface area of 135,000 sq m. An additional 160,000 sq m is used to cultivate the fruit and vegetables that feed its animals.

“The carbon footprint of our park is close to zero,” says Kiessling. “We work with renewable energy, we are free of plastic, and the only palm oil we have is in our chocolate bars and ice cream. Also the fish we feed to our sea life is from the North Sea, because the fish from the Canary Islands are not suitable for the animals.”

Aquarium adventures 

It was in late 2017 that the Kiessling family launched Poema del Mar in Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria. This slightly smaller Canary Island has a similar population to Tenerife (just shy of 1 million) and sits about 100km east.

“Compared to a water park or attraction park, I believe opening an aquarium might be one of the most difficult tasks in the world of entertainment,” says Christoph Kiessling.

“Usually a new attraction looks better than an old attraction. With an aquarium, it’s the other way round. You start with an empty exhibit, with small fish. The aquarium is like springtime. Every day it gets a little nicer. But once the fish grow, you have new responsibilities to adapt the spaces. It’s quite a challenge.”

Poema del Mar big tank

Spread over three themed zones are 350 species of marine life, including 10 types of ray alone. The 6,000 cubic litre deep sea tank inside the Ocean zone is one of the biggest in the world. The other zones are Jungle and Reef.

Like Siam Park, Poema del Mar is being operated this year with around 30% less labour than pre-pandemic.

“Before COVID, everybody had staff for everything,” says Kiessling. “Now we have issues with costs and the supply chain. At Loro Parque, we have only 15% fewer people because 90% of the staff are responsible for animal care and we can’t cut costs there.”

COVID in the Canary Islands

A waterproof face mask as sold at Siam Park during the pandemic

Given that the tourism industry in the Canary Islands relies heavily on inbound tourism –  Kiessling’s parks attract more visitors each year than the population of either Tenerife or Gran Canaria – the past two years have been particularly challenging.

Together with neighbouring resorts Playa de las Américas and Los Cristianos, Siam Park’s location in Costa Adeje is very much Tenerife’s tourist epicentre.

“The south of the island was so empty [at the height of the pandemic] you could have had a picnic in the middle of the road,” says Kiessling. “Once we saw that the demand had fully returned we reopened Siam Park, but it was closed one month longer than the other two.”

The post-lockdown protocols were interesting.

“We wanted to make all visitors comfortable, and remind those who believe COVID is not existing to respect the rules of the park,” says Kiessling. “It was difficult to ask some customers to wear a mask. People would say, ‘All I have is a paper mask’. But we sold neoprene masks. After you dive into the water and come back to the surface, they are dry again. You forgot you had them on.”

According to Kiessling, tourism levels are back to normal in the Canaries, and there are some encouraging new trends.

New tourism trends

“The Canary Islands have qualities that are very important post-COVID,” he says. “We have the best year-round climate and sanitary conditions. If you are European, because we are in ‘Spain’, your social security is valid. People who in the past would fly to more exotic places like the Maldives or the Caribbean are choosing to come here. Together with Greece, we are the winners in Europe after the pandemic.”

Both Siam Park and Poema del Mar have recorded a double-digit percentage increase in visitors so far in 2022. Yet numbers are down slightly at Loro Parque because tour operators have not fully resumed their itineraries on the island. Pleasingly though, more local people have been persuaded to discover/rediscover Kiessling’s attractions since lockdown.

Loro Parque parrot show

“Before COVID, we had 91-92% tourists,” says Christoph. “Now our resident market is between 15 and 16%.”

Other than a pandemic, it is natural disasters that are most likely to stem the flow of tourists to the Canary Islands. Whilst last year’s volcanic eruption on La Palma did not impact the neighbouring islands to the East, the Tropical Storm Delta of 2005 caused considerable damage in Tenerife.

Building Siam Park & linking to Loro Parque

Yet the storm presented an opportunity to the Kiessling family, who had already begun construction on Siam Park.

“After the storm, a lot of people were frightened that fallen trees could cause damage to their homes,” says Kiessling. “So we put an announcement in the newspaper, saying we will take away their trees for free.”

Those trees, together with earth shifted from north of Tenerife, were planted on site to help accelerate the park’s landscaping.

Siam Park_entrance

“What other parks do is theming,’ says Kiessling. “What we do is different. We go to the country, buy materials and work with local craftsmen so that what we build is authentic. We want to serve our customers with the smile and kindness of Asia.”

Though Siam Park has some spectacular attractions, large parts of them are hidden by foliage. There are no slide towers either. Rather guests make their way to the top along landscaped walkways. 

“We control the ride experience like no other water park in the world,” says Kiessling. “We are not plastic fantastic, we are about sensation and emotion.”

A link to the marine life at Loro Parque is provided by the sea lion habitat that guests encounter as soon as they enter the water park through its magnificent temple-like entrance building. There’s also an aquarium they glide through on the park’s lazy river.

Ski-ing Siam Park

Kiessling recalls a meeting with Rick Hunter, chairman and CEO of ProSlide Technology Inc., an industry leader in water ride manufacturing and design, before Siam Park was built in 2004.

“We walked up the mountain together at [what is now] the back of the park. It was like a desert. Rick started making movements like a skier. ‘I wanna have a slide here, going left, right, making an S-bend, a jump’…’

“We ran up and down that mountain a hundred times.”

water slide at Siam Park

This display of passion from Hunter, a former Canadian national ski racer, was enough to secure ProSlide the exclusive slide contract for Siam Park. Other than the Lost City water playground, the firm has supplied every slide since. This includes many hybrid and combination water rides utilising the hillside terrain.

“The Kiesslings are incredible visionaries,” says Hunter. “I knew from day one of meeting Christoph and Wolfgang in 2004 that Siam Park would become a top beacon in the world water park industry. The incredible topography of the site gave us a unique opportunity to custom design some world-leading water rides that became ‘part of the mountain’.”

The world’s first TÜV-certified water park

“When we designed Siam Park, I think there were 10 Tornado [funnel slides] in the world,” says Kiessling. “You had the in-run, the attraction, then the out-run. I wanted more than that. There should be light, and dark, moments of disorientation. On our Dragon ride, you accelerate into the Tornado, you can see your people, you go through the funnel, and then we give you another push.”

During the construction of the park, the Kiessling family invited the German testing authority TÜV Sud to inspect and certify its slides and attractions.

pool at Siam Park

“They said they don’t certify waterparks,” recalls Christoph. “I said, I know, but I want you to. They sent their people to Canada to supervise the engineering and construction of our slides. Then we invited them to Tenerife to supervise the installation and operation. Nowadays the TÜV certifies water parks in America, China and all over the world.”

World-class waves and rivers

Other signature Siam Park attractions include Singha (RocketBlast/FlyingSaucer45 combo), Kinnaree (Tornado24/TornadoWave60), Vulcano (BehemothBowl60) and the Tower of Power, a 28m-long, 80km/h speed slide. The Lost City, by WhiteWater, a leading waterpark manufacturer, features a further 15 family slides, towers, slides, bridges and water features.

At 1km in length, the Mai Thai River is one of the longest lazy rivers in the world. It comprises an 800m course, an optional 200m fast section and an 8-metre elevation change. Murphy’s Waves was responsible for the waves in both the large Siam Beach area and smaller Coco Beach. Other vendors include Vanstone, which installed the tube-carrying conveyors on some of the park’s larger attractions.

The next addition earmarked for Siam Park will be another large-capacity attraction from ProSlide. Described internally as a duelling Singha, it has been chosen not just for its thrill quota but also for its people-eating potential. On a busy day, the water park can entertain as many as 9,000 guests.

Yet not everything is unstoppable as it may seem in Kiessling’s kingdom.

The Siam Park 2 blues 

This June, an appeal to proceed with a second water park in Gran Canaria was dismissed on the grounds that it did have sufficient water provision. Christoph Kiessling refutes such claims. Nevertheless, it is the latest of several setbacks for ‘Siam Park 2’, or Siam Park Gran Canaria as it will be known. Whilst Thai theming is again central to Kiessling’s plans, he adds:

“It will not be a clone [of the original Siam Park].”

A 189,000 sq m hillside site has been secured in El Veril outside the resort of Playa del Inglés. Only instead of a highway running alongside the bottom of the park like in Costa Adeje, a road runs along the top of what is a ravine. Intended as the focal point of the park is a ‘Tree of Life’ which Kiessling describes as, “Possibly the tallest artificial tree in the world.”

Siam Park water slide with giant lizard

Other proposed features include saltwater snorkelling. The Kiessling family would also like to build a Siam Park hotel. This is something it once touted in Tenerife but abandoned after the local authority sought compensation. ProSlide is already on board when it comes to slides and attractions. But first, another planning application has to be submitted and approved.

One thing is for sure. Christoph Kiessling’s signature will be all over the new park, whenever it sees the light of day.

The taste of success at Loro Parque, Siam Park & Poema del Mar

Kiessling’s hands-on approach to business is visible everywhere. It extends from his choice of music in Siam Park (feel-good ’80s grooves) to the food he sells in each of his in-park restaurants and kiosks.

“The bread, the cheese, the sausage; everything has to pass along my table,” he tells us. “I go for the look, the taste, the feeling, but I don’t look at the brand or the price. When people come to my parks and have a good experience, they are happy to spend again.”

Turtle and fish at Poema del Mar

As we wrap up our conversation the next day at Siam Park, Christoph walks out of his office to discover several boxes of croissants and enchiladas delivered by a local baker. Despite the fact he’s on his way to dinner, he stops to sample them. Some are discarded, and others are given the seal of approval.

Whether it’s pastries, water slides or animal habitats, Christoph Kiessling is a man who knows what he likes. Fortunately, over two million annual guests appear to like the same thing.

Images courtesy of Siam Park, Loro Parque and Owen Ralph unless stated otherwise.

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Owen Ralph

Owen Ralph

Feature writer Owen Ralph has covered theme parks and attractions for over 20 years for publications including blooloop, Park World, World’s Fair, Interpark, Kirmes Revue and Park International. He has also served on boards/committees with IAAPA and the TEA. He grew up just 30 minutes from Blackpool (no coincidence?)

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