How did a Katoomba-based family company beat 12 of the world’s major corporations to win the contract to run tourism on the Sydney Harbour Bridge?
David Hammon, CEO of Hammons Holdings, said the benefit of 73 years’ experience of his family running Scenic World helped enormously.
Hammon and his sister, Anthea, children of Phil and grandchildren of Scenic World founder Harry, have worked at the attraction “since we were kids” and used that background knowledge in their bid.
“We looked at what we do at Scenic World – we’re really good at safety, we’re really good on looking after staff, we create an exceptional customer experience. We understand tourism really, really well.
“We took all the experience we have at Scenic World and just applied it to the bridge and we thought, well, what else would we do there?
“At Scenic World, we tell the story of the steepest train in the world and we tell it really well.
“There are all these amazing stories to do with the bridge – the engineering, the way it changed the social dynamic of Sydney at the time, the economic effects.
“And using technology was the way we thought we could do that [tell those stories].”
It obviously impressed Roads and Maritime Services, which last Friday awarded Hammons Holdings a 20-year contract for tourism activities on the bridge, including the famous climb.
Unsuccessful bidders included Merlin Entertainment, the world’s second-largest theme part operator after Disney, US-based Anytime Fitness which operates 4,000 franchises in 30 countries, and Ardent Leisure, owner of Dreamworld, WhiteWater World and Skypoint.
And, of course, BridgeClimb, established by Paul Cave, who battled bureaucracy for a decade to get the attraction up and running. Mr Hammon paid tribute Mr Cave’s pioneering work.
One of the areas the Hammons would be looking at would be opening up different parts of the bridge to new experiences.
He said there were champagne corks popping after the news came through last week.
He also revealed one of the happiest moments was seeing the reaction of his father, Phil.
“He was very happy. It was lovely – we were in a board meeting and Phil just said, ‘I wish my dad was here to see this’. You knew that it meant a lot to him.
“It’s a great story for a Blue Mountains family business.”