Corporate Culture And Euro Disney

.
             During the first year of operation, Euro Disney became the most popular tourist attraction in Europe with 11 million visitors (Giltin, 1994). While that news sounded good, Disney had expected over 12 million guests and a 10 percent greater expenditure by those guests. Europeans were spending less and leaving sooner than was projected by the Disney Corporation's market experts (Giltin, 1994). By the end of Disney's first year the corporation was losing over 1 million US dollars a day and it was 1 billion dollars in the red (Echickson, 1993). .
             As an emergency response, a team of American experts was hired to assess and solve the problem. One team member stated, "Our first major challenge was convincing Disney CEO, Michael Eisner that there was a problem. He thought it all would "iron itself out" (interview with Disney financial consultant, 1996). Over the course of the next two years the company was completely restructured and renamed. During the initial years of Euro Disney, Euro-Disneyland and Disneyland, Paris (all one in the same), European skepticism was prevalent, resulting in a significant loss of both money and reputation (Williams, 1994). .
             As mentioned earlier one of the key factors for the early problems in the establishment of Euro Disney was their insistence on using predetermined procedures for operating a theme park that were based largely upon its previous successes (Clotaire, 1995). Euro Disney's human resources manager made it a point to say,.
             The Americans took what was done in the past and implemented it here. They brought their techniques. Disney has what we call "Savoir faire" or they know of certain things like animation, creating magic, etc. But there was no market study at the beginning and if there was, it was largely insufficient.
             While another account given by a French investment banker mentioned that in fact a market survey was done, however Disney was not wiling to consider its results.