Meeting with the one who has just celebrated his 20 years of service at Walibi.
The last few months have not been easy in Walibi. Closed for health reasons, limited public, until catastrophic floods in July. Yet Walibi is still standing and thinking about the future. Meeting with the owner of the park, Jean-Christophe Parent.
Jean-Christophe Parent, we know you as the boss of Walibi. But who are you exactly? Tell us about your journey.
“My background is, at the start, much more focused on tourism. I am a former GO of Club Med and I was mainly in charge of finance in different villages, as well in Morocco as in the Bahamas, in France or in Spain Along the way, I returned to Belgium quite exhausted from this experience which is very rich in human terms but which is very exhausting physically. I therefore resumed training to become a consultant in SAP, and I worked a few years for IBM and then Glaverbel. And then, by chance, an acquaintance of mine with whom I had studied called me, telling me that they were looking for someone in Walibi. I declined because it had only been six months since I was at Glaverbel. Six months later, he called me again to offer me the same thing and there I said yes. All this takes place between 1995 and 2001 since I returned on August 1, 2001 to Walibi, which had just changed its name – Six Flags – in April or May. I really got there by chance. I had been there only once, when I was a teenager, and I was not at all fond of amusement parks in general. I joined the Walibi family and I’ve been here for 20 years. “
And in 20 years, you’ve seen a lot of change …