Before I get too into this, I understand that amusement parks are not hotels, but they are at the very least tangential to the broad travel industry. So I'm going to take a little leeway to write about them in my column this week because I very much want to.
For those who aren't aware, just a matter of weeks ago, the French and Saudi Arabian governments jointly announced a new €6 billion amusement park development that would be located just northwest of Paris.
That news on its own is only somewhat interesting to me, despite the eye-popping numbers, including the promise of 22,000 jobs created.
What was personally interesting to me the developers made the very clear decision to make this park themed on the internationally popular Dragon Ball manga and anime — and movie and video game and every other form of media possible — franchise.
Now, I enjoy Dragon Ball — and Dragon Ball Z — as much as the next person, and maybe even more than most. But apparently, I don't enjoy it as much as French President Emmanuel Macron, who has tweeted about his love for Dragon Ball and his related memorabilia in the past.
What he apparently didn't do, though, was ask anyone if it was OK to use the intellectual property for a Dragon Ball theme park.
I'm sorry, but this part is very funny to me. To get to the point where the governments of two sovereign nations are jointly announcing a multi-billion euro — or dollar — level real estate investment that is expected to be a major tourism drive, and simply no one put any time into checking what it'd take to get the actual licensing rights.
There is currently no Waldorf Astoria hotel here in where I'm based in Cleveland, Ohio. So maybe I should raise many millions of dollars to purchase land and build a hotel so that we can have one. I'm sure the folks at Hilton won't mind if I never call to ask them if that's allowed, right?
In yet another strange turn, it apparently wouldn't have been hard for park developers to find the people they need to talk to about Dragon Ball licensing because the Saudi development team at Qiddiya Investment Company apparently already worked with Toei Animation on a planned park near Riyadh.
As France 24 reports, licenses are complicated in Japan, and the rights to the Dragon Ball intellectual property are split between Toei, which made the anime; Shueisha, the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump where the manga originally ran; Bandai Namco, which licenses Dragon Ball's IP for video games; and original creator Akira Toriyama's Bird Studio.
Maybe they didn't make the call because they didn't know where to start.
Now this is the part of the blog where I should do my best to tie this into a takeaway for the hotel industry, but the best I can think of is don't build a hotel without signing a brand agreement? Sign your contracts before making a big public announcement?
I don't know. Maybe it should be: Don't try to build a Dragon Ball hotel without asking the people who own Dragon Ball first.
Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or via email.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CoStar News or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.