Summary The success of Disney Tokyo had encouraged Disney to build a theme park in the Europe country.

The Disney management decided to choose Paris as the new location because of the Frenchs government generous incentives and also the impressive date of the regional demographics. In April 1992, EuroDisney opened its door to the public and they are expecting 11 million visitors and generate over $100 million profit during the first year of operation. Unfortunately, by summer 1994, Euro Disney had lost more than $900 million since opening and the visitors only reach 9.2 million in 1992. Visitors of EuroDisney were reluctant to spend during their visits and they spent 12 percent less than the estimated $33 per head. Besides, the French parents only bring their children out to the theme park on a public holiday occurred over a weekend. The French also see EuroDisney as American imperialism where Disney alienated many of their counterparts in the government, banks, ad agencies and other concerned organizations. Disney also failed to acknowledge the environmental factors such as the recession, Gulf War, devaluation of currencies against Franc and other competition that lead to the failure of EuroDisney. They are also insensitive to the local culture where they banned alcohol in the park where French is the world biggest wine consumer. Due to lack of research, they also mistakenly assume the Europeans dont consume breakfast but many were turned up at the restaurant ordering for bacon and egg. As for advertising, Disney did not stress the entertainment value of a visit to the new theme park but only the size of it which had ruined the magic. In June 1994, a Saudi royal family decided to invest $500 million for a 24percent stake. Frenchman Philippe Bourguignon took over as CEO of EuroDisney in 1993 and he successfully drove EuroDisney back to profitability. He changed the marketing strategies, decreased the price for park admission and hotel rates and changed the name to Disneyland Paris. In the twenty century, Disneyland Paris continue to expand the theme park by adding in new exciting parks such as the Walt Disney Studios that blends Disney entertainment with the history and culture of European films. After a tremendous success in Japans Disneyland, Walt Disney step into Europe and it was designed to be the biggest and most lavish theme park in Paris on April of 1992. But the fiscal year 1992 to 1993 brought EuroDisney a loss of more than $900 million. The major factor contributing to the poor performance was poor understanding of the marketplace and failing cultural adaptation. Disney builds, promoted and communicated EuroDisney as a piece of marvelous America in Europe. Everything about the park was American and cultural differences between America and Europe were completely neglected. French culture also has its own lovable cartoon characters such as Asterix, the helmeted, pintsized Gallic warrior who has a theme park located near EuroDisney. Besides that, Disney banned alcohol in a wine loving culture. These resulted not only in negative experiences by

customers itself, but also in a heavy load of criticism from the intellectual segment of France, which traditionally did not have good relations with Americanism. Another factor was the vacations behaviours of Europeans. Europeans prefer spent only 1 or 2 days to visit the park compared to their American counterpart who spent at least 3 days, resulting EuroDisney occur less revenues from hotels, restaurants and souvenirs. Besides that, they also failed to consider the vacation customs of the Europeans. Europeans enjoys month long vacations while American preferred short but several vacations in a year. On the other hand, in the European mindset, the price to enter the park and especially staying at the hotels was too high. A nightly stay at a hotel at EuroDisney was priced $110 to $380, in comparison to a very good hotel in the center of Paris cost $340 to $380. Europe customers were not willing to spend this amount of money and the general amount of money spent a day by them was also lower than expected. Europeans were reluctant to spend the $280 a day needed to enjoy the attractions of the park. In short, Disney should be doing a proper research about the vacations behaviours of Europeans to avoid these incidents occur. Besides the cultural and vacations behaviours problem, the opening of the park in 1992 with big events such as the Worlds Fair in Seville and the Olympic Games in Barcelona during the summertime was detrimental to EuroDisney. Besides these interesting events, the transatlantic airfare war and currency movement made going abroad for vacation a cheap option for Europeans. This resulted in just a small difference between going to Disneyland Orlando and EuroDisney for the holidays. Last but not least, EuroDisney can delay the time of opening the park after the interest event to avoid customers shortage. Disney as a parent company was probably blind sighted by the successful of the Japanese Disneyland; the mistakes made in the nineties with EuroDisney were at least partly foreseeable and can be accounted on the management team that made the decision for the European park. The hotel pricing is probably the most controllable and foreseeable factor of all. The fact that a very good hotel in the center of Paris costs as much as a stay at a good, but not exceptionally well Disney hotel, so this should have been taken into account by the EuroDisney team. The European vacation behaviour is not directly controllable, but could have been foreseen. So is the wave of criticism from the French intellectuals: even now, almost twenty years after the opening of EuroDisney, the English language is still unpopular in France and the American consumerism style is not appreciated. The uncontrollable factors are the environmental issues, such as the economic outlook like the transatlantic airfare war and currency movement and also the major European events: the Worlds Fair in Seville and the Olympic Games in Barcelona. So, Disney could have postponed the opening of EuroDisney, but given the fact that the park was done and ready for use, this did not seem as a financial viable option.

Ethnocentrism defined as the notion that ones own culture or company knows best how to do things, it is directly related to the start of Disneyland in Europe. The Disney belief was that what it sells in the U.S and Japan would sell just as well in Europe. So when Disney opened EuroDisney in Paris the park was a symbol of American culture. As a former Disney executive cited Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and President Franck Wells had never made a single misstep, never a mistake, never a failure. There was a tendency to believe that everything they touched would be perfect. I think though, that the powerful personality of Eisner, coming off of several victories where he forced his vision through the objections of the American business community to win big and be therefore validated set the entire EuroDisney enterprise up for failure. The culture was so different from America or Japan that there was little frame of reference in common. Believing all Europeans enjoyed the same sausage or Europeans vacationed in the same way that Americans did was easily corrected by cultural awareness that would not have cost much but they were too ethnocentric to even know the questions to ask. Japan unlike, France, succumbed to Disneys promotional firepower. Japan welcomed the taste of American culture; France on the other hand went nationalistic. Attempting to impose American values, such as nondrinking on the French or appearance rules would have been easily understood as a mistake if they had even asked. The reason behind this could be the success of the Japanese Disneyland, which succeeded without any changes to the local culture. It may have been that managers at EuroDisney fell back on their self reference criterion to have misinterpreted European society. Disney followed a domestic market extension concept, believing one universal product would be accepts in Europe with as much vigor as was seen in Japan. These lead EuroDisney facing a lost more than $900 million since opening. In the early stage, Disney had poor cross-cultural skills. Disney management team failed to recognize the importance of cultural adaptation in EuroDisney as they misinterpreted the culture and behaviour of European customers. Besides that, Disney management team made several erroneous assumptions which affected construction design, marketing strategy, marketing mix, and initial financing. Disney was felt short of being sensitive to the cultural differences between Europeans and Americans. One of the cultural difference is Europeans have a different eating habits and food preferences. Disney was downsized restaurant breakfast service because their executives had been erroneously informed that Europeans do not eat breakfast. In fact, Europeans have a habit of eating breakfast resulting in long queues at the restaurants due to inadequate staffing and seating. Moreover, Europeans did not just want croissants and coffee, they want more

variety of food such as bacon and eggs. Disney ban alcohol in the park which proved they are insensitive on local culture because French are the worlds biggest consumers of wine. Next, vacation customs of Europeans were not taken into consideration. Disney expected that American-style short but more frequent family trips would displace the European tradition of a one-month family vacation. However, Europeans did not change their vacation customs for visiting EuroDisney. Another cultural difference is travel habit. Disney was built a expensive trams along a lake in the theme park to bring hotel guests to their destination but Europeans customers prefer walking. Furthermore, personal grooming of employees was taken in consideration. French women like to wear redder nail polish so female employees in EuroDisney were allowed to do so but Disney maintained for the taboo on male employees facial hair. After EuroDisney suffering for the huge losses, they realized the problems and made appropriate changes in their marketing strategy to cater the needs of Europeans customers. Disney had reacted with the complaints of lack of food variety from visitors in EuroDisney. They revamped its menu to cater to the multiple indigenous tastes of various European cultures such as increase the selection of sausages. Furthermore, Disney blends European influence in Disney entertainment and attractions. For instance, Walt Disney Studio blends Disney entertainment and attractions with the history and culture of European film. In addition, Disney characters speak six different languages and design a track modelled on French town. From the instances as mentioned above, we know that Disney was striving to adapt local culture. Disney has shown its ability to learn from their mistakes as they made the right decisions on marketing strategy and became Frances most visited tourist attraction. As a conclusion, Disney has poor cross-cultural skills in the beginning stage. However, they practiced fairly well cross-cultural skills after they recognized the problems and revised their marketing strategy.

Tokyo Disneyland in Japan is the first Disney theme park that built outside the United States of America. Between 1990 and 1992, about 14 million people had visited Tokyo Disneyland, with three-quarters being repeat visitors. Disney management team were not certain of the success of the first international venture because they just took the entire U.S. theme park and transplanted it in Japan. They did not make any changes to the construction of theme park as well as adapting local culture, so they think Tokyo Disneyland will not be successful. However, Japanese attachment to Disney characters and they want Americanism Disney theme park instead of Japanese Disney theme park. Moreover, they perceived Disney theme park as the ultimate U.S. entertainment, thus constitute a very rare case that the number of visitors has not decreased since the opening. The success without much cooperation, deeper understanding or adaptation led to the false belief of Disney that they can be successful in Europe by transplanting their theme park. Tokyo Disneyland was not owned and operated by Disney Company, yet they only collected small fraction of the massive revenues. As a result, Disney intended to rectify the business opportunities by owning and operating the theme park in France. Furthermore, Paris is Europes most popular city destination among tourists and it has convenient transportation system. The great business opportunities in Paris make Disney Company expected to be success in Europe. As a conclusion, the success without much effort in Japan and potential opportunities in Europe predispose Disney management to be too optimistic in their expectations of success on France. Yes. The theme park would have encountered the same problems if a location in Spain had been selected. Spain and France have similarities in many respects, in terms of origins and culture, climate, experiences in economy and history due to Spain is seated next to France. The major problem with EuroDisney was that they neglected their host countrys culture and did not do sufficient research on the country. For example, if the policy of the ban of alcohol consumption in the theme park was implemented in Disney Spain too, they are going to face the same problem occurred in Paris as Spain is the sixteenth in the world for wine consumption (Wine Institute 2012). Besides, the business culture in Spain tends to emphasize on doing business with people that they know. In order to starting a business in Spain, it is rather important to build a network of contacts in different sectors of society (Expatica 2004). However, Euro Disney alienated many of their counterparts in the government, the banks, the ad agencies and other concerned organization. Without a healthy relationship with the Spanish, Disney will encounter a lot of problems. In Spain, they will need a large network to get things done.

Other than that, when Euro Disney was entering the European market, they did not prepare a contingency plan. So when the European countries were hit by the recession in 1980s, they had a hard time coping with it. During the recession period, Spains per capita gross domestic product was ranked low among the industrial countries (Mongabay.com 2012). So without a well-planned contingency plan to face with such issue, EuroDisney will hardly survive even if the location was in Spain. Lastly, Spain and the United States had been in war during the year of 1898. The war was caused by the America when they made demands of Spain that it find a way to peacefully resolve Cubas demands for independence and at the mean time, a lot of anti-Spanish news stories was also published in an American newspaper(Country Facts 2010). Ever since, the relationship of America and Spain has not been good. Carlos Alberto Montaner once wrote in his article called "Espaa y el antiamericanismo" that Spain is the most anti-American country in Europe (Orsi, P 2005). If Disney were to build Euro Disney in Spain, there is a big possibility that some Spanish will boycott the theme park. The early 2000s recession was a decline in economic activity which occurred mainly in developed countries. Most of the European Union (EU) members including France affected and suffered high unemployment rates in 2005 and onwards. Therefore, disposable income per household may be constricted. So, the Europeans would think twice before spending for leisure and entertainment. Other than that, an unforeseen combination of transatlantic airfare wars and currency movements resulted in a trip to Disneyworld in Orlando being cheaper than a trip to Paris. So, The CEO is lobbying the government to open up the Charles de Gaulle airport for low cost airlines to attracting the visitors and would bring the park close to a larger number of Europeans. Reducing the airfare can attract more travellers to visit Europe Disney. For the example, even if a holiday is not occurring over a weekend parents might consider to bring their children to Europe Disney because travel by air is more cheaper, more efficient and also save time.