Can you afford the pool now? Photo: DSRT Surf//Facebook
Just days after DSRT Surf opened to the public, surfers looking to book sessions may have noticed price drops across the board. The expert barrel sessions that were priced at $370 are now $270. Beginner sessions, once as high as $250, are as low as $130.
The initial price points made DSRT Surf the most expensive public surf park on the planet, aside from Kelly Slater’s pool in Abu Dhabi, and significantly more expensive than the $212 price for expert sessions across town at Palm Springs Surf Club.
Instagram comments are hardly a scientific measure of public sentiment, but DSRT Surf took some punches on social media when it announced its opening last weekend. Surfers called the price tag ridiculous. Some said they would rather book a trip to Cabo.
According to DSRT Surf’s Vice President and General Manager, Michael Gerano, the company heard the feedback.
“I would say we certainly shot high, the public spoke, and we’ve made adjustments accordingly,” Gerano told The Inertia. “As a result, yes, there are some attractive pricing results.”
The Palm Desert pool will eventually be able to accommodate as many as 700 surfers per day when it fully opens. For now, however, it’s open with a limited capacity of 150 people on the property at a time. Beginner sessions will be able to accommodate as many as 75 surfers in the water at once across the two partitioned surf zones. Expert wave settings limit capacity to between nine and 16 surfers per session.
DSRT Surf calculated its initial price points in partnership with the company’s ownership group and Beach Street, its management wing. Looking at the bookings through the first three-week window, Gerano called the initial pricing a “learning opportunity.”
Gerano acknowledges that the park is priced higher than other Wavegarden pools around the world, but says DSRT Surf is operating in a different economic landscape between California real estate prices, wages, and labor models.
With DSRT Surf’s arrival in the California desert, Coachella Valley is ground zero for close-quarters wave pool competition. Nowhere else in the world are two public surf parks located nearly as close as DSRT Surf and Pam Springs Surf Club. But Gerano insists that pricing is based on the product they offer, rather than its competitor just 10 miles away.
“We have two completely different technologies, and I would say two completely different experiences,” Gerano said. “Our capacity is also far greater. So we have to put more bodies in the water every hour because of just the sheer size of our lagoon.”
“But it’ll certainly be something that I will closely watch, how the two of us perform, because we do want to be courteous neighbors and we’re not here to disrupt their business,” he added. “I think they have an interesting offering, and, obviously, our technology will speak for itself. We’ll see where that goes.”
DSRT Surf’s Wavegarden pool uses the Spanish technology company’s latest design, which Wavegarden calls its most “diverse” menu, with 60 wave types. The Wavegarden Cove at DSRT Surf covers 5.5 acres, more than twice the size of Palm Springs Surf Club’s pool.
Gerano isn’t worried about price cuts affecting profitability. He notes that DSRT Surf has the permits to build 57 villas on the site. Some will be sold, while others will become rentals.
Developers have successfully used surf parks as an incentive to sell real estate around the world, most notably with the Wavegarden and American Wave Machine pools in Brazil. Another such development is underway with Endless Surf technology in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
“There is a real estate component here, and this project is very unique because of that,” Gerano said. “So, essentially, the villas could almost recoup the entire investment of our entire footprint.”
