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 […]
First week of what promises to be a very different summer. My garden at home has never looked better. But it sure does feel strange, not to know whether Liseberg will be welcoming guests this summer or not. Most attractions in Europe will open over the next five weeks. Museums, zoos, and aquariums as well as larger commercial attractions and resorts. Important steps towards recovery, whether this will be a new normal or not. For the last couple of […]
This is not a blog about Coronavirus. But about the notion of Coronavirus. These are strange days. For most people. For most industries. It seems like the virus is impacting everything we do; whether the context is personal or professional. It becomes increasingly apparent, that there is a direct correlation between technological, sociological and economical sophistication on one side, and vulnerability on the other. A vulnerability that will most likely not decrease in the future, with ever more intricate global […]
I am a glass-half-empty kind of guy. Never really 100% happy with anything. Always worrying. Although it sounds depressing, it is just not a negative. It is probably part of what drives me. And at the same time, it is most likely built into my job.
Sometimes I wonder if it is fear of failure, or aspiration for success, that drives me. In the age of fast paced change and disruption, Atychiphobia – being the sometimes unwarranted but always persistent fear of failure – might be the most powerful force of the two. And I am not alone. Recently Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, talked about the company’s inevitable demise. ’Amazon is not too big to fail’, as he said. ’I predict the day we […]
Life is short. And the older you get, the shorter it seems. This is of course wrong. I know that the perception of time over a lifetime is linked to changes in mental stimuli. But one of the things that do change as you get older, is the impact of the choices you make.
Change is hard. Scary. Uncomfortable. Draining. But also sometimes necessary. A few days ago, we communicated that I will be leaving Liseberg, taking a new role at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. And since then, my life has been a whirlwind of new faces, old acquaintances, well wishes, welcomes and goodbyes. As well as one or the other question. ‘Why leave one of the best jobs in the industry?’, as one of my friends asked me. As with most decision making […]
A couple of weeks ago, I visited the happiest country in the world, Finland, to participate at a conference about Särkänniemi’s future and expansion plans. Särkänniemi is – apart from being a really lovely park in a really lovely city – together with Liseberg one of just a handful of municipally owned parks in the world.
