Plans have been announced to fit Stockholm’s giant snowball, Globen, with a glass elevator to take people to the top as a tourist attraction. The tour is up 130m to the top of Globen and takes around 10 mins to complete. There will be two elevators, each carrying 16 people, with seating places for 5. The organisers say that they can even be hired out to companies for conferences in the evenings (assuming that you don’t want more than 16 people at your conference and they take turns sitting down).
I actually think that this would be a good idea. Tourist numbers in Stockholm are going through the roof and it would be an interesting thing to do. The only problem I have with it would be the fact that Globen is outwith the city centre and the usual tourist hangouts and all they offer is the view, there will be nothing up there to do.
The cost is going to be around 40million SEK. Lets look at those numbers…
The most they could ever charge for this to the end consumer would be 70Kr (£5.30), it’s only for 10 mins after all. After costs, tax etc. it would generate around 40Kr tops. So they are going to need a million visitors to recoup construction costs. Over 4 years, the would need 690 people everyday. That’s 43 full cabins per day, every day for 4 years to break even. At 10mins a journey and only 2 cabins, that’s pretty close to full capacity.
I think that could just about be do-able as it’s under 6% of the 12000 visitors Stockholm has every day, but when you take into account marketing costs etc. the 40Kr soon becomes 20…
What we need is a real reason to go up there for the locals too.
Why not build a giant all year ski-slope for the way down. The Swedes love to ski and the Stockholm region is pretty flat so it hits all the right buttons!
On the other hand, this would also add another 300million to the budget. Perhaps the best way to get the locals to use it would be to put a korvkiosk (hotdog stand) up there.
Korv on top of Globen? I would pay for that!
