WE WANT YOUR LAKE
For the lake owner this can have huge benefits, we can match you with an operator who we deem a great fit for your requirements. This could be location based, activity offering, style of business or many other reasons. You as the lake owner can in many ways sit back and let the operator do all the work and collect rent.
Finding an operator for your body of water, is perfect for any number of the following waterways:
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Rural lakes, on farms in the countryside, eg Farm Diversification.
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Holiday Park Lakes, enhance the activity offering to your holiday park guests.
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Re-generated Docks, activating the water and bringing it to life in the middle of a City Centre.
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Council Parks, bring income and many social benefits to waterways within council parks and public areas.
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Quarry Restoration Plans, all quarry’s must have restoration plans, before planning is granted to quarry. Include a Watersports park in your restoration scheme and gain valuable social benefits in your planning application.
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Country Parks and Estates, often have lakes, parking and visitors. Add to your revenue by adding a Watersports activity.
We work with a number of multi-site Watersports and Adventure Park operators around the UK and Ireland. These operators are extremely experienced in running successful, safe and fun businesses, on all sorts of bodies of water, from lakes to re-generated docks, holiday parks and even coastal locations. These operators are always looking to expand and open new parks and if you own a lake or have access to water, we can help you find the perfect operator for you. The operator will pay you rent, make the capital investment and operate the park.
Costs and Rent
What can you expect from rent, in simple terms an industry standard would be never more than 10% of ex vat turnover. With sites turning over anything from £300,000 to well over £1,000,000. How much a site can generate in revenue is dependant on many many variables including the capacity of the Watersports park installed, on land facilities, car parking spaces, local demographics and location. Most operators you would speak to you, would have historical figures from their existing sites.
The percentage of rent will also be dictated a bit by the amount of capital investment required by the operator. The costs for the ‘on water’ equipment is fairly standard, but the ‘onland’ facilities and services can vary drastically. For example a much higher investment will be required for a lake in the middle of a farmers field, compared to a lake in an existing holiday park or city centre, where parking, services and even buildings already exist.
Don’t forget these operators are not going to investment a ton of money on a small lease length. For a low investment site maybe 5 years could be acceptable, 10 years is more realistic and for sites with large investment considerably longer might be needed. A million pound investment for example might well require upwards of 25 years on a lease.
Activities
The operators we could help find for your lake, operate any number of the following water based activities:
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Aqua Park
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Aqua Chimp
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Cable Wakeboarding
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Open Water Swimming
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Stand Up Paddle Boarding
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Paddle Sports
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Pedalos / Electric Boat Hire
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Catering
Why not do it yourself
Operating a Watersports Adventure Park like these is a very specialist business, yes there are certainly fantastic margins to be made from operating on your own lake, but it is not easy and the biggest asset you can have to be successful is experience. It is simply not possible to create any new business without a huge amount of work, time and money. Let the operator do all this for you, let them make the investment, take the risk and do the majority of work. Plus they are very good at what they do, you have zero experience, they have all the H&S signed off, the staff training and recruitment methods in place, links with all suppliers, etc. This is also a highly seasonal business, this is not 9 to 5 work. Make your life simple, generate income, enhance the social benefits from your lake and leave the operating to the people with that expertise and experience.