Liseberg has made it through a world war, economic crisis, devastating fires and most recently a pandemic. And we are still here. Monday this week, we celebrated our 100th anniversary. One hundred. I am not a big fan of anniversaries – no matter what is being celebrated. In our industry, it is often a commercial trick used to give an otherwise outdated product a nicer packaging. Or a way to celebrate our own attributes and brilliance. I don’t really like […]
The years 2020 and 2021 will go down in history as the years that changed the way we look at life, freedom, globalization, trade, travel, work, togetherness. We realized how fragile everything we had taken for granted is. And even though we’ve risen – as individuals, companies, societies – the years have left scars that are hard to cover. But now, with the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, I can’t help but reflect on how the pandemic in many ways […]
High pressure. High Season. High stress. But this year, it is … different. Normally I am shuffling around weather apps, worrying about the all-too-unstable Scandinavian summer weather during the all-too-short peak season. But in 2022, it is all turned upside down. With continued (self-imposed) capacity restrictions, we are constantly trying to balance volume, turnover, and guest satisfaction. This also means, that having too many guests is actually just as stressful, as having too few. Most attractions in the LBE sector […]
In 2012, the European Union proposed that larger and listed companies should fill at least 40% of board seats with women. This proposal has been stuck for almost 10 years but seems now to be getting a second wind. As someone who hates quotas, I am somewhat divided on this proposal. But the problem is quotas seem to work. And maybe it is the least bad among bad tools to create more inclusive and diverse leadership of major companies. I […]
Halloween, check. I am going to miss meeting evil clowns in the staff restaurant and zombies on my way to HR. But in a few weeks, Christmas choirs and elves will move into the hallways. Paper snow will stick to my shoes everywhere I go, and carols will be playing in a loop outside my office, driving me crazy. However, it is also that special time of year that every economist looks forward to. Budget time. Which is a rather […]
Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. In these times of COVID-19, I think all of us have these types of insights. What we took for granted is no longer an absolute – a truism. This is not in every case a bad thing, as our expectations and values need a calibration now and then. But it can also be challenging. Especially when you actually knew what you had, but never thought you would lose it. At […]
Is it possible to be very happy – and very sad at the same time? To feel overwhelmingly relieved, but at the same time extremely frustrated? I believe so. If nothing else, the pandemic has challenged us all with the need for dialectic thinking. Understanding that two things can be true at the same time. That we are not navigating in black and white, in a landscape of absolutes. But instead recognizing, that we are – for the most part […]
These days, it seems like we are all flying in a holding pattern. Waiting for vaccines. Waiting for lockdowns to be lifted. Waiting to bring back staff from furloughs. Waiting for a new year – and a new season – to begin. When looking back at the last 12 months, I must admit that ‘patience’ has probably been the personal quality I have had to rely on the most. A quality, which may not be my most prominent character trait. […]
2020 has been a dark year. For the world. For our industry. And for Liseberg, 2020 was the first year since the park welcomed its first guests in 1923, that the park did not open. Not because a safe and responsible opening was not possible, but because the Swedish amusement park industry got squeezed in a conundrum of a pandemic legislation, that was not really made for the situation we were in. The consequences for Liseberg have been enormous – […]
On July 11, 1923 Albert Einstein held his Nobel lecture at Liseberg, on the theory of relativity. The lecture was in German, quite long, and one of the anecdotes from this event was that the Swedish King, sitting on the first row, fell fast asleep well into the event. ‘The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking’ Albert Einstein once wrote. And this quote still rings true […]
