Digging into the economics of attractions like surf parks reveals a wide range of money-making proposals and market potential around the world. The price tags vary, from building a standing wave for anywhere between a couple of million dollars, to tens of millions. One Myrtle Beach project in 2023, for example, saw its initial $54-million development plan jump to $70 million as they decided to pack more attractions into the 21-acre plot of land.
And those price tags don’t even give us the full scope of maintenance costs or revenue losses when a pool breaks down and is forced to close its doors unexpectedly, which just happened at the brand-new Palm Springs Surf Club less than two weeks after opening. But the fact that everything from standing waves to complete man-man wave pools have popped up around the world at such a massive scale over the past decade tells us all something very obvious: there’s money to be made.
A new ski and snowboarding contraption – a three-story hamster wheel covered with snow – is jumping on that same bandwagon. The company Snowtunnel is promoting a tech that is exactly what its name implies, bringing the standing wave concepts of river surfing to the ski and snowboard market. It’s definitely eye-catching because well, it’s a giant spinning full-pipe with a coat of snow inside. And artist renderings of the tunnel on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier no longer seem like ridiculous amusement park gimmicks because this is absolutely something a deep-pocketed US Open of Surfing sponsor would try to swing. Correction, it’s something they will try.
You saw it here first….Photo: Snowtunnel
The snow-making aspect of the tech is pretty impressive in real life because the current prototype, which seems to be the only actual Snowtunnel in existence right now, is located outdoors in Melbourne. With normal temps in the mid-80s and footage of the tunnel being put to work, the engineers at Snowtunnel do have that as a selling point to investors. That and the very obvious viral factor of putting a three-story soda can/billboard on the beach while inviting people to ride a spinning full pipe.
