Adrenalin Forest Achieves New Heights In Safety

Adrenalin Forest Achieves New Heights In Safety

Adrenalin Forest’s adventure parks challenge visitors by providing an aerial experience that’s exciting, adrenalin filled and, at times scary. However, the company’s founder Jean Caillabet says the core of his business isn’t about providing thrills, but focused on keeping visitors and staff safe.

Adrenalin Forest is proud of its safety record; the company won the ACC Safety Award category of the Wellington Gold Awards earlier this year and undergoes regular audits to maintain its OutdoorsMark accreditation.

A year ago, in order to enhance safety, Caillabet adopted an innovative French safety system, Clic-It[1] which removes the possibility of participants being able to unintentionally take both safety devices off the safety cable while they are on the aerial course.

“The safety of our clients and staff is paramount and really the core of our business. Our business is essentially about making safety fun because if we were to slip up, and believe me when you’re 31 metres up a tree it’s going to hurt if you fall, then we wouldn’t have a business,” Jean Caillabet says.

“While it cost $200,000 to adopt across the three parks, it’s been worth it. “The Clic-It safety system has transformed our business: our people are now able to spend more time encouraging, helping and assisting people with the challenges as opposed to ‘supervising’ them, in the knowledge that safety is largely taken care of. This makes for a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience than before for all parties.

Almost 2 years ago a man died in an accident at an Auckland adventure park, which had significant consequences for the adventure park industry and Adrenalin Forest.

After that accident, we experienced a 40% fall in business – no one wanted to come to an adventure park after that and it took the best part of a year to regain our momentum. Last year over 70,000 people visited Adrenalin Forest’s three adventure parks with the Bay of Plenty Park receiving some 20,000 visitors and Christchurch and Wellington 25,000 visitors each.

Caillabet was so impressed with the Clic-It system that in September he became the New Zealand agent for the company. While it is early days, the system has been adopted by YMCA Wellington who use it on their rope course and outdoors programme andBlack Water Rafting at Waitomo Caves. Canyon Swing who operate over the Shotover River near Queenstown, are currently trialling the system.

Caillabet says that New Zealand’s adventure parks are committed to best safe practice and he was instrumental in establishing NZAPES (New Zealand Adventure Parks Embrace Safety) which shares safety information and aligns current industry practice with best practices for safety last year.

“There’s no way we’d ever go back to the previous carabiners system, Clic-It has not only improved the safety aspect but the overall experience for our clients is now much better due to this new technology,” Jean Caillabet says.

ENDS

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