David & Anthea Hammon
David and Anthea Hammon, brother and sister and joint Managing Directors of Scenic World, reveal how they’ve transformed a beloved Blue Mountains hub.
In the beautiful Blue Mountains, Scenic World boasts a range of attractions from the iconic Scenic Railway to the Skyway, Walkway, and Cableway. Brother and sister David and Anthea Hammon took the reins of the family company in 2011 and have systemically and strategically transformed the company.
After a $30-million upgrade, Scenic World now boasts Australias largest gift shop, an improved ticketing system, and a 303-per-cent increase in Chinese visitors. The CEO Magazine recently sat down with David and Anthea to discuss the company's skyward ambition.
Anthea says, "We'd been talking about it a little bit before that as well. From an engineering point of view, any piece of mechanical equipment has a limited life. The Scenic Railway was just getting to a point where it needed some work done on it. There was a choice to replace around 75 per cent of the components because they were coming to the end of their useful life, or we were going to have to rebuild the train."
"We talked about it with Dad, who's chairman of the board, and David and I discussed it; and because one of the values of Scenic World is ‘always evolve', we thought, ‘Is it really worthwhile to rebuild the same thing when we could evolve this product into something new, refreshed, and more engaging for our customers?' We took the plunge and went with something new."