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Assault course Bear Grylls Adventure

Embracing adventure: Merlin Entertainments & Bear Grylls

Bear Grylls Adventure in Birmingham aims to empower people through experiences

Marc Bell, business development director of the Merlin Magic Making Division, runs the Bear Grylls Adventure for Merlin Entertainments. He speaks to blooloop about the attraction, its origin and development, as well as the strategies he identified to fine-tune and adapt the business model.

In addition, adventurer Bear Grylls OBE, one of the most recognised faces of survival and outdoor adventure globally, comments on the pervading ethos, the aim behind the attraction, and the democratising of adventure.

An early career with Merlin

Marc Bell Merlin

Bell is a Merlin veteran, having been a member of the team at Alton towers from 1990 to 1994.

“I joined selling into the coach trade, visiting schools, and presenting to the groups market. Ultimately, by the time I left, I had become marketing manager,” he says. “The last thing that I worked on there was the launch of Nemesis.”

Nemesis, Europe’s first inverted roller coaster, opened at Alton Towers in March 1994.

“It’s quite an iconic ride. I was part of the team that got it off the ground. I have very fond memories of Alton Towers. It was there that I met some of the current Merlin directors.”

Since then, Bell has worked in marketing roles across the leisure and retail sectors. This includes stints at Grenada Hospitality Ltd and easyGroup. He was away from Merlin for 25 years or so, in total, before returning four years ago to run the York dungeon, close to his home:

“I’ve been based in York with my family for quite a while now. I was quite settled, and not looking for anything major in terms of career development. I had spent over 20 years as a company director, before coming back to the fold.”

Bear Grylls Adventure

Two and a half years ago, he was asked to look at Bear Grylls Adventure.

“It is an R&D project for Merlin, which opened in October 2018,” he explains. “I joined the team at the start of 2020, about 12 weeks before lockdown.”

The Bear Grylls Adventure, based at the NEC, covers an 80,000 square foot area. It features a variety of thrill-based activities including rock-climbing, skydive simulators, zip lines, high ropes, diving, and snorkelling. 90% of the space is indoors, with the remaining 10% outdoors.

“It’s not a linear attraction, where you pay an entry price, walk around and experience the activities,” he says. “This one is cashless; it’s pre-booked online.”

This is because several of the activities – diving with sharks, for instance, or indoor ‘skydiving’ in an iFLY wind tunnel – call for an extensive health and safety process.

The outdoor segment comprises Europe’s highest high ropes course, by Innovative Leisure Ltd.

“It’s pretty impressive,” says Bell. “Guests can go onto a staged climbing frame that is over 65 feet in height.”

Activities at the higher levels require core strength, stamina, and stability:

“The essence of the Bear Grylls Adventure brand is that it is the home of action entertainment.”

A wide range of adventurous activities

Inside, there are more activities. For instance:

“There is a million-litre ocean tank. This is full of blacktip sharks, tropical fish, and zebra sharks. Guests can snorkel and dive among them. Then we have something a little more mainstream, the four escape rooms. It’s a timed experience, where groups of up to eight people solve puzzles and challenges in less than an hour.”

Then there is the Royal Marines-inspired Assault Course, which includes scramble nets, monkey bars, traverse beams and A-frames. Unlimited access to the Assault Course is included in every ticket.

Assault course BG Adventure

“Bear has a long association with the Royal Marines,” Bell says. “He was involved in the conceptual design of the attraction. Again, it’s really popular. It’s a timed activity where guests pit themselves against all the different challenges on the assault course.

“We also have our ‘Target Academy’, which involves archery and shooting. You can shoot a rifle and a pistol at targets in a safe environment; our indoor archery range is quite special, too.”

There is an indoor climbing course, which was a pragmatic decision:

“When the weather means we can’t operate the high ropes, we can bring our guests inside. Most are happy to switch to the indoor climb. Finally, we’re launching axe-throwing this month. That brings us to 11 experiences in total, besides the F&B, retail, photography area, and so on.”

Targeting the young at heart

The target demographic is, he says, everybody who is young at heart and wants to do something out of the ordinary.

“The target audience is 15 to 34-year-old adults, and families with children eight-plus. You have to be 8 years or over to go into the attraction; for both shooting and shark-diving you need to be over 10. On the trade side, we offer a product for schools and groups. We’re sitting right in the middle of the active adventure segment of the experience economy, appealing to as broad a range as possible.”

Ropes Course Bear Grylls Adventure

Speaking about what Bear Grylls brings in terms of the ethos, Bell says:

“Bear is very much about championing the adventure lifestyle: experiencing something new, pushing the boundaries, stepping out of your comfort zone. That motto ‘never give up’ shines through in the design spirit of what we do. An example of that is that the Bear Grylls Adventure is now a finalist in the West Midlands Tourism Awards for accessible and inclusive tourism.

“Bear was very conscious that he wanted everyone, including those people with any form of disability, to be able to take part in the activities to some degree.”

Sustainability & animal welfare at Bear Grylls Adventure

Sustainability, Bell stresses, is also a consideration, on several fronts:

“We want to be sustainable for the local economy. Merlin has made a significant multimillion-pound investment in the West Midlands economy, based at the NEC. We need to make sure that it works, providing security for our staff.

“It also needs to be sustainable in terms of our care of animals. We have the privilege of looking after some wonderful, diverse species. We have a complex life support system that ensures the protection of the animals that we take care of. Plus we have a permanent onsite curator, who is an experienced animal care operator. Her primary responsibility is the care of the animals. She is on the site, on-call, 24 hours a day.”

“We have the backing and resources of Merlin’s network of zoologists, marine biologists, aquarists and industry experts, as well as the Conservation, Welfare and Engagement (CWE) team. Our curator and I have regular catchups with that team. They advise, support, audit, and govern how we manage the animal care. Thirdly, we monitor, track, and report all the life support system indicators.

“We also have a relationship with the Shark Trust. We donate a proportion of the diving with sharks ticket price into their charity conservation efforts. They were on-site recently, looking ahead to our plans for 2022. We want to address people’s misconceptions about sharks as animals.

“Then, of course, we do as much as possible in terms of recycling, minimising our carbon footprint, and so on.”

The next chapter

Possible expansion to new areas is on the cards:

“It is, as I mentioned, an R&D project,” Bell says. “We are exploring other Merlin sites. In my role as business development director for MMM, I’m actively exploring other sites. I can’t say too much about that. But we’re looking in the Asia-Pacific region, and also at other locations in the UK. Our first task was to make the Birmingham site successful.”

Bear Grylls Adventure entrance

Despite the complications presented by the COVID pandemic, this has been achieved:

“We’re looking forward to a really good year,” he says. “So, we are now in the very early stages of starting to explore other sites. There is nothing yet in the build pipeline, but we’re researching locations.”

Bear Grylls Adventure: the business strategy

Touching on how he addressed tuning the business strategy, he explains:

“As always, the first things we did was to listen to our customers, and to look at the data.”

The fact that activities are pre-booked online affords a useful insight into customer expectations around the product:

“You can see what people are looking at, what they’re purchasing, whether you get repeat sales, et cetera. When we launched in 2018, the concept was very much based on bundling up multiple activities into something thing called Base Camp, which was quite dramatic – rooted in the idea of Bear Grylls climbing up Everest and getting to base camp.”

kids at Bear Grylls Adventure

“However, customers didn’t really understand that. When they got to the attraction and saw the (then) ten activities, something would catch their eye. And they couldn’t understand why, having booked a different bundle of activities, they couldn’t try it.

“The first and most important change, therefore, was to operate the site on a pay-as-you-go basis. Rather than bundling activities, we present the activities on their own merits, and guests can purchase online.”

Additionally, the value for money aspect is preserved:

“We include the assault course free of charge with any activity. That’s important because it can be quite an expensive day out if there’s a family of people participating. We’re aware the cost can still be high. But the other side of that coin is that the guests need to be reassured that the quality, safety, and experience are of the highest possible standard.”

Bear Grylls on empowering others

One factor that makes Bear Grylls Adventure unique is the fact that Grylls himself had so much input in putting together the attraction.

“It’s always been a clear goal with my work and how I live, to empower people to be able to get out there and find their own adventures in life,” Grylls tells blooloop:

“We set up the BGA with the aim of making some truly amazing adventures accessible for anyone. We wanted to give experiences like shark diving or free fall to people who might not easily be able to get to do those things in regular life.”

Bear Grylls Adventure

“When you stand on the top of our high ropes course (the highest in Europe) it takes your breath away. It genuinely requires some real courage to keep moving forwards at times. That’s the same with anything in life that’s scary, sometimes you’ve just got to go for it and adopt a Never Give up attitude.

“We opened our Bear Grylls Adventure Park at the NEC, Birmingham UK back in 2018, and people’s response has been amazing. We’ve helped thousands of people of all ages to face some fears and conquer some incredible challenges. That’s always fun to be part of. We are now actively looking for new sites and to roll these out globally over the next few years.”

Highlights at Bear Grylls Adventure

Ropes Bear Grylls

The high ropes course is, for Grylls, a particular highlight:

“I am very proud that we have Europe’s highest free ropes at our park. It’s pretty imposing. Its spectacular structure is the first thing you see when you enter the park – along with the chinook zip wire, which is absolutely epic!”

Additionally:

“We find that people love our dive experience. You can become truly immersed in a giant sustainable aquarium, and you end up swimming totally surrounded by sharks. It’s pretty special.

“As you may be aware, the primary challenge in shark conservation is to try to end overfishing. Tragically, this means humans kill over 100 million of these remarkable creatures every year. By working with The Shark Trust, we can educate and raise awareness of these issues. A percentage of each Dive ticket purchased will go towards The Shark Trust and their efforts to research shark habitats and safeguard their future.”

Instilling confidence

Adventure play, he stresses, does not mean child’s play:

“Ultimately, people want to learn cool new stuff and to experience some true adventure challenges. Humankind is wired that way. We want to know if we can cope in those pressured moments, thrive in adversity, and rise to big moments.”

Bear Grylls Adventure iFLY
Fabio De Paola/PA Wire

“Adventure has an incredible way of bringing people together and empowering us through the challenge. One thing we repeatedly see at the BGA is how it can help people to find a quiet confidence – and a pride in some new skills learnt.”

Bear Gryll’s influences

Commenting on his own influences, and the drivers that drew him to adventure as a way of life, then as a career, he says:

“My late father was a former Commando in the Royal Marines, a climber, and always such a big inspiration to me. He taught me to survive and climb from a very young age. He also showed me that it was OK to have big dreams, and that to fail a few times is essential to any success.

“We are taught at school that success is about grades or talent. But those things have limited value if they are all you have. The rewards in life will tend instead to go to the tenacious and the determined. I love that, as it levels the field.”

assualt course kids BGA

“Dad used to say to me: ‘Follow your dreams and look after your friends and family along the way – the rest is just fluff.’ He was right. But the essential ingredient to it all is being able to keep going despite the storms, struggles and failure.

“That’s why I say “never give up” so often to my boys. It’s key. Failure is only failure when we give up.”

Embracing adventure

The Bear Grylls Adventure, he feels, may be a springboard, in terms of inspiring others to embrace adventures outdoors:

“The BGA park is all about empowering people through experiencing some amazing adventures in a safe, fun environment.

“My hope is that people leave the park feeling that little bit braver, a little more ambitious and that, in turn, they go on to do other fun adventures with those they love, wherever they might be.”

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Lalla Merlin

Lalla Merlin

Lead features writer Lalla studied English at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, and Law with the Open University. A writer, film-maker, and aspiring lawyer, she lives in rural Devon with an assortment of badly behaved animals, including a friendly wolf

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