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Nonlife insurers’ growth prospects remain bright

RATINGS AGENCY AM Best gave a stable outlook to the local nonlife insurance sector, citing robust long-term growth prospects, firms’ higher minimum net worth requirement and wider adoption of technology.

AM Best said in a report released on Thursday that a stable outlook means the ratings body expects market trends will have a “neutral influence” on local nonlife insurers over the next 12 months.

“Our outlook is stable, underpinned by long-term growth prospects and positive regulatory developments,” it said.

The long-term outlook shows the industry still has solid growth prospects, supported by the country’s rising gross domestic product per capita, to drive demand and the insurance penetration rate.

AM Best noted that the increased minimum net worth requirement of regulator Insurance Commission (IC) means many nonlife insurers, especially mid-tier companies, have to carry out fundraising exercises or consolidate to meet the mandated P1.3 billion by 2022.

“AM Best notes that without additional fundraising actions, about half of the direct nonlife insurers in the market will not be able to meet the P1.3 billion capital requirement by the stipulated deadline,” it said.

Smaller firms will struggle to find investors given their niche business models and small premium bases, the agency said.

“As such, AM Best expects the appetite for M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity involving smaller nonlife insurance companies to be low, making it probable that a number of these companies may be ordered to wind up in the event they cannot meet the minimum net worth requirement by 2022,” it added.

The ratings firm said the increased minimum net worth requirement is a “credit positive” for the industry as it is expected to improve its overall mid-term prospects by strengthening companies’ capital positions.

The IC’s move to allow the remote selling of insurance products could also boost the sector’s growth as it gives firms a chance to widen their customer reach and distribute higher value policies digitally.

“In AM Best’s view, while capital management and regulatory support can help the insurance market survive the pandemic, it is digital transformation that will enable the insurers to recover and remain competitive. Nonetheless, the increased use of digital solutions and interfaces also present new risks for insurers to manage, including technology and cyber risks, which will require robust security controls,” it said.

Despite the rosy outlook, the insurance ratings agency said downside risks remain for the sector, such as the impact of the ongoing global health crisis, the country’s high risk of natural disasters, and strong market competition.

AM Best said the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will continue to challenge the nonlife sector in the near term as the severe slowdown in the economy and weakening investment market conditions could affect insurers’ incomes.

“Although nonlife insurers have made progress in adapting to the current environment by bolstering their infrastructure and use of digital solutions to be able to operate in a remote manner, potential future waves of infection are likely to be met with further movement restrictions in the country,” it said. 

The Philippines being a disaster-prone country is also a risk for the sector, AM Best said. It said it expects the nonlife industry to improve its capacity for modeling and managing underwriting risks, including consideration of catastrophe risk accumulation, with the help of technology. The ratings agency said it will also monitor local firms’ ongoing partnerships with global reinsurers in managing these risks.

The IC has said it plans to launch the first Philippine Catastrophe Insurance Facility this year to help the nonlife sector better manage disaster-related exposures and expand the sector’s capacity to take on more risks. — Beatrice M. Laforga

Justice League original director’s cut debuts

LOS ANGELES —  Fans disappointed by 2017 film Justice League are finally able to see the original director’s vision for the movie that united several DC Comics superheroes on screen for the first time. Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League debuted Thursday on HBO Max.

“This movie would not exist at all without the fans, without the fans’ pressure and without their constant drumbeat and without their dedication on such a level that you can’t even imagine,” Mr. Snyder told Reuters in an interview.

Mr. Snyder and his wife Deborah, a producer, left the original film before it was finished following the death of their daughter. The movie was completed by Avengers director Joss Whedon and fell flat with critics and fans who thought the storytelling was disjointed and the visual effects messy.

Fans began lobbying for WarnerMedia to release Mr. Snyder’s version of the film. They even bought a billboard in New York’s Times Square in Oct. 2019 to promote their cause. In an unusual move, the company agreed and let Mr. Snyder rework a black-and-white version that he had completed in 2017.

The new movie goes into greater detail about many characters, which include Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, and explains the motives of their enemy, Steppenwolf. Stars include Ben Affleck as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.

Critics have generally applauded Snyder’s version. The film scored a 77% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a website that aggregates reviews, as of Tuesday, compared with 40% for the 2017 movie.

The new film runs four hours and is divided into chapters of around 30 minutes each to give options for viewers watching at home, Deborah Snyder said. “They can watch it, binge watch it all the way through or they can watch it in parts,” she said. — Reuters

Petron still needs to address low fuel consumption, demand — Ang

OIL REFINING and marketing company Petron Corp. will need to address the problem of low fuel consumption and demand even after it was able to register as an enterprise in the Bataan province’s freeport area, the company’s top official said on Thursday.

This comes around two months after the Authority of the Freeport Area of Bataan (AFAB) approved Petron’s registration, and the company’s subsequent commitment to invest nearly P3 billion to improve the operations of its 180,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Bataan.

“[The AFAB accreditation] can help, but it won’t necessarily overcome all the problems, because the problem is the low consumption of fuel, of demand. And then [there’s the] overcapacity of refining capacity in the world. There’s barely any refining margin,” Petron President and Chief Executive Officer Ramon S. Ang told reporters in a mix of English and Tagalog during a media briefing on Thursday.

Registration with the Bataan freeport allowed the refinery to avail of tax perks.

Earlier, Petron said that its registration to the AFAB “will help make its refining business more competitive by improving its financial viability in the long run and address some of its major concerns.”

On Thursday, Mr. Ang also said the country’s fuel business would “improve if people are allowed to travel by cars, planes or vessels.”

“So if nobody can travel even next year, fuel and power demand will be low,” he said in a mix of English and Tagalog.

In December, the firm said that it would be halting its refinery plant operations in Bataan starting mid-January for “maintenance activities on key process units.”

Asked about how Petron’s operations in Malaysia were faring, Mr. Ang said that its oil business there was “much better than the Philippines.”

Shares of Petron in the local bourse inched up 1.28% or four centavos to close at P3.16 apiece on Thursday. — Angelica Y. Yang

PNB net profit down 73% in 2020

PHILIPPINE NATIONAL BANK (PNB) saw its net income drop 73.14% to P2.6 billion last year from P9.68 billion in 2019 amid increased provisions for loan losses due to the pandemic.

The Tan-led lender said in a disclosure to the local bourse on Thursday that its net profit before provisions for impairment and taxes rose by 17% year on year to P17.6 billion.

PNB set aside P16.9 billion in provisions for credit losses last year, five times higher than the year-ago level. It allocated loan loss reserves for the worst-hit sectors during the pandemic, including real estate, transportation, wholesale and retail trade to manage risk exposures.

The bank’s net interest earnings, which accounted for 79% of its total operating income, grew by 10.69% to P35.82 billion last year from P32.36 billion in 2019.

The lender said interest expense on deposits went down by more than half even as total deposits increased by 7.8% to P890.3 billion from P826 billion in 2019. This, as  the majority of additional deposits were low-cost funds and as the bank settled P7 billion in maturing long-term negotiable certificates of time deposit last year.

Meanwhile, interest income from loans went down by 6% on muted credit demand during the pandemic.

Its loan portfolio went down by 9% year on year to P600 billion.

“This reflected the weak demand for loans owing to economic uncertainties as well as PNB’s strategy to focus on strengthening its liquidity position by investing most of the available funds in short-term and more liquid placements to remain resilient during the pandemic,” the bank said in a statement.

Non-interest earnings, on the other hand, grew on the back of favorable market opportunities, with gains in trading securities jumping by threefold to P3.3 billion, PNB said. This offset the 9.5% decline (to P4.68 billion) in profits from service fees and commissions due to reduced banking transactions.

The bank recorded total operating expenses worth P44.79 billion last year, 56% higher than the P28.67 billion seen in 2019.

PNB’s consolidated resources reached P1.2 trillion as of end-December, 8% higher than the year-ago level. The bank’s capital adequacy ratio stood at 15.14%, while its common equity Tier 1 ratio was at 14.47%, both above the minimum required by the regulator.

“The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary for PNB to adopt a more prudent approach in asset deployment and recognize substantial credit provisioning which adversely impacted its bottom line in order to protect the balance sheet,” PNB President and CEO Jose Arnulfo “Wick” A. Veloso was quoted as saying in the statement.

“However, we remain confident that these strategies, along with our planned tactical moves will ensure that the bank will emerge from the crisis stronger in the long-run,” Mr. Veloso added.

PNB’s shares closed unchanged at P23.30 apiece on Thursday. — B.M. Laforga

Actor Johnny Depp seeks appeal in UK wife beater libel case

LONDON —  Hollywood star Johnny Depp will seek permission on Thursday to appeal against his defeat in a London libel case last year over a tabloid article which labeled him a wife beater.

High Court Judge Andrew Nicol ruled last November that Mr. Depp had violently assaulted his ex-wife Amber Heard during their tempestuous five-year relationship, at times putting her in fear for her life. That decision came after three weeks of hearings where the court heard sensational claims and counterclaims from Mr. Depp, 57, and Ms. Heard, 34, about violent outbursts which each accused the other of committing.

Mr. Depp, star of films including Pirates of the Caribbean and Edward Scissorhands, had gone to the London court to sue The Sun newspaper and one of its journalists over an article that stated he had been violent towards Ms. Heard.

“I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard,” said Mr. Nicol in his November ruling.

In the aftermath, Mr. Depp’s lawyers said the ruling was so flawed it would be ridiculous for him not to appeal. They said it was “troubling” that the judge had relied on Ms. Heard’s testimony while rejecting the evidence of police officers, her former assistant and other witnesses which they said had undermined her evidence.

On Thursday, Mr. Depp’s legal team will apply for permission to appeal, and to rely on further evidence. The hearing, expected to last for about two hours, will be livestreamed on the Court of Appeal’s YouTube channel.

Following Mr. Nicol’s verdict, seen as being highly damaging to his career, Mr. Depp was asked to leave the Fantastic Beasts franchise, the movie spin-offs from the Harry Potter books and films.

Mr. Depp has also filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Ms. Heard in a Virginia court over an opinion piece she wrote in The Washington Post. — Reuters

Singapore firm completes P11.9-billion investment in AC Energy

AN AFFILIATE of Singapore firm GIC Pte. Ltd has completed its P11.9-billion investment in Ayala-led AC Energy Corp. (ACEN), which will allow the latter to fund its developmental and operating projects, according to a press release issued on Thursday.

This comes around a week after ACEN told the local bourse that GIC affiliate Arran Investment Pte Ltd. will be subscribing to four billion primary shares through a private placement at P2.97 apiece. The investment agreement between ACEN, its parent firm AC Energy and Infrastructure Corp. (ACEIC) and Arran was signed on Dec. 30.

The private placement is the first tranche of GIC’s investment in achieving a 17.5% stake in ACEN.

“The investment [in ACEN] will be implemented through a combination of subscription to four billion primary shares via a private placement, and the purchase of secondary shares from ACEIC or the “top up,” ACEN said.

The top-up will allow GIC to reach a 17.5% ownership in ACEN, taking into consideration the planned infusion of ACEIC’s international assets into ACEN.

The GIC unit’s private placement is one of the five steps of AC Energy’s corporate restructuring, according to Eric T. Francia, its president and chief executive officer, during a media briefing in November.

“GIC is pleased to partner with the Ayala Group, the largest and oldest conglomerate in the Philippines, in their journey to build one of Southeast Asia’s leading renewables platforms,” GIC Chief Investment Officer for Infrastructure Ang Eng Seng was quoted as saying in a statement on Thursday.

“With AC Energy’s geographically diversified portfolio of renewable energy assets and proven track record of profitable growth, we believe the company is well-positioned to capture the shift from fossil-based to clean, sustainable energy in the region,” Mr. Seng said.

AC Energy Chairman Fernando Zobel de Ayala said that the group and GIC are both committed to sustainable investments.

“GIC provides not only growth capital, but also the experience and network that will help us scale up our renewables investments,” Mr. Zobel added.

AlphaPrimus Advisors acted as the financial advisor to ACEN and ACEIC for the transaction.

Last week, ACEN announced that it had recorded P3.87-billion net income last year, around 29 times higher than the previous value on the back of higher electricity sales.

Shares of ACEN in the local bourse improved 1.45% or 10 centavo to finish at P6.98 apiece on Thursday. — Angelica Y. Yang

Banks pay P2B yearly for failure to meet agri-agra quotas, BSP says

LENDERS INCUR penalties worth about P2 billion annually due to noncompliance with the mandated quotas under Republic Act 10000 or the Agri-Agra Credit Act of 2009, a central bank official said.

“On average, banks pay around P2 billion in penalties every year generally since 2011,” Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Supervisory Policy and Research Department Deputy Director Ma. Cynthia M. Sison said in an online briefing on Thursday.

BSP data showed loans qualified under the agricultural segment of the Agri-Agra Law stood at P642.371 billion as of end-December 2020. This was only 9% of banks’ P7.136-trillion loanable funds, falling short of the 15% requirement.

Meanwhile, banks lent P71.228 billion under the agrarian reform segment, which was only 1% of their loanable funds in 2020 and below the 10% quota in the law.

Lenders have been opting to pay penalties instead of extending credit due to the risks associated with lending to the agriculture and agrarian reform sectors.

BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno cited factors for the low compliance such as difficulty from the borrowers’ part to secure agrarian reform credit; limited availability of agri-agra compliant debt securities; and the lack of visible bankable agricultural projects.

“For this year, the BSP, Department of Agriculture, Department of Agrarian Reform, Agricultural Credit Policy Council and other relevant agencies will continue to push for the enactment of comprehensive amendments to the Agri-Agra Law,” Mr. Diokno said.

In March 2020, House Bill No. 6134, which contained these amendments, was passed on third reading and was transmitted to the Senate. Its counterpart Senate Bill 1924 is pending at the committee level.

Both measures include more projects for compliance with the mandated credit for the agriculture and agrarian (agri-agra) reform sectors.

The BSP this month released Circular No. 1111 which expanded eligible agri-agra loans to include those for activities related to the agricultural value chain, from farming, fishing, as well as other processes involved in converting an agricultural product from raw material to its consumption form.

It also included communities and integrated development made up of farmers who were granted land or benefited from redistributed land through previous agrarian reform programs as possible loan beneficiaries.

Mr. Diokno said the amended implementing rules and regulations of the Agri-Agra Law are only “interim measures”, adding that they will continue to push for direct revisions to the law. — L.W.T. Noble

iQIYI to develop regional stars for Southeast Asia push

SINGAPORE —  Chinese online video platform iQIYI plans to launch a talent agency in Southeast Asia to cultivate its own entertainers as it pushes to become Asia’s dominant streaming platform, a senior executive told Reuters.

The company, the parent of which is search engine giant Baidu, announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with Singapore entertainment group G.H.Y Culture & Media to start a talent management agency to identify and train talent in the region of 655 million and showcase them in its productions.

The move, which comes three months after the streaming platform installed its international headquarters in Singapore, is meant to launch young stars that would be popular with both Chinese and Southeast Asian audiences, said Yang Xianghua, president of membership and overseas business.

“We’re already growing fast, with Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore as our highest growing markets,” he said. “We saw 12 times the user growth for the region in 2020.”

Simultaneously, Mr. Yang said that iQIYI’s Southeast Asian productions are seeing strong viewership numbers in China.

“Our goal is to be an Asian content platform,” he said, adding there were plans for more original

Southeast Asian TV shows and movies, with teams in South Korea and Japan working on developing original dramas and anime respectively.

A show on the agency’s search for Southeast Asian talent will also be aired.

With its young online population, Southeast Asia is becoming the newest battleground for streaming platforms, with video subscription revenue set to grow fivefold by 2025, according to a study by Google, Temasek Holdings and Bain & Co. Other companies also have plans to expand in Southeast Asia. Disney+ launched in late 2020 in Indonesia and Singapore, Netflix has ramped up subscription-only services for the region and Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeTV bought the assets of Malaysian streaming platform Iflix in June.

Tencent has won significant market share from iQIYI in China, but the two are collaborating on international productions. A company spokeswoman said that WeTV is now airing an QIYI-produced Chinese variety show. The show features K-pop rapper and Thai national Lisa, of hit band Blackpink, the type of regional star that iQIYI now hopes to nurture. — Reuters

First Gen’s attributable net income slips 7%

FIRST GEN Corp. said on Thursday that its net income attributable to equity holders dropped by 7% to P13.7 billion last year, citing a decline in electricity sales and reduced earnings from its natural gas portfolio.

In disclosure to the local bourse, the Lopez group’s power generation arm said that its consolidated revenues from the sale of electricity decreased 15% to P91.2 billion year on year due to the effect of the global health emergency.

“While we are grateful that First Gen was marginally affected by the decline in power demand resulting from the pandemic, we are still looking forward to a better 2021. Not only do we expect the country to climb its way up to recovery,” First Gen President and Chief Operating Officer Francis Giles B. Puno said in a statement.

First Gen said all of the company’s platforms were affected by the decline in demand brought by the pandemic that resulted in lower power prices.

Last year, First Gen’s natural gas portfolio accounted for the majority or 59% of total consolidated revenues, while contributions from subsidiary Energy Development Corp. (EDC) made up 38%. First Gen said that the hydro plants made up 2% of its consolidated revenues.

First Gen said that earnings from its natural gas platform suffered a 7% decrease to P9.3 billion in 2020, following an unplanned outage of its 420-megawatt (MW) San Gabriel power plant that happened six months ago and higher income taxes after its income tax holiday expired last year.

The company added that low spot market prices affected the 100-MW Avion natural gas-fired plant, but this was “offset fresh earnings” from the start of its ancillary service contract in June 2020.

Meanwhile, attributable earnings from EDC, which handles the parent firm’s geothermal, wind and solar platforms, increased by 5% to P5.3 billion in 2020.

“EDC was able to save on operating expenses in contrast to several one-time expenses that occurred in 2019 due to the company’s reorganization. Moreover, the Energy Regulatory Commission approved the Feed-in Tariff rate adjustments from 2016 to 2020 for the Burgos Wind and Solar Projects,” First Gen explained.

However, EDC recorded a lower recurring attributable net income to its parent of P4.5 billion last year, down by around 13%, due to lower power demand.

First Gen said that its hydro platform’s attributable earnings contribution dropped by 90% due to lower prices in the spot market. But it said the drop was “mildly offset” by higher ancillary service sales.

Mr. Puno said that the company was gearing up for the construction of the country’s first liquified natural gas terminal by April, which will put it in a “good position” to expand its gas portfolio following the energy department’s moratorium on greenfield coal plants.

Shares of First Gen in the local bourse improved 0.16% or five centavos to close at P30.85 apiece on Thursday. — Angelica Y. Yang

Why customer experience is everything

At the onset of the pandemic last year, companies hurriedly shifted their business models to digital by setting up e-commerce and online platforms. Great example of digital transformation; or so we thought.

For instance, one large grocery chain set up an online ordering system which my wife started to use. She would visit the grocery portal, nicely choose her orders, and check out to pay online. Then, surprisingly a person calls her to say that some items she ordered are not available and asks her what alternatives she wants to order instead. Right now, one year after the pandemic, this set up still exists, the same customer experience which is not seamless.

There are many companies like this in financial services and consumer goods industries, which hastily migrated to digital transaction at the start of the pandemic, with all their assumptions about how customers would use their services. Then, they never bothered to validate if the customer journeys across all experience touchpoints are indeed delighting the customers in a seamless fashion.

Therefore, customer experience or CX will be more important than ever especially during this time when consumers and customers avoid physical movement and contact. It is a totality of cognitive, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during entirety of the consumption process for a product or service, including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages. The overall experience reflects how the customer feels about the company and its offerings, highlighting the how important the emotion of the buyer is.

CX is nothing new as it was already a concept used by brick-and-mortar businesses since the 1990s. But the rise of internet-based businesses in the dot-com era of the 2000s gave rise to the importance of digital touchpoints or stages across the buying and consumption process that employ digital interfaces such as parsing through an online shopping catalogue and checking out to pay.

Companies born on the internet, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon have perfected the science and art of designing great customer experiences, that even integrate offline experiences such as logistics and delivery of products from Amazon. Traditional companies immediately adopted this and even made customer experience their mantra to drive loyalty and repeat purchase from customers.

In fact, a 2018 PWC study titled “Experience is everything” revealed that great experience drives 16% price premium on products and services. It also drives higher loyalty, and 63% more willingness to share more information.

But before the pandemic, CX was considered a tick box that needs to be checked. In our consulting work with several organizations, we did a lot of customer journey mapping with executives of companies. Customer journey maps are visual illustration of customers’ processes, needs, and perceptions throughout their interaction and relationship with an organization, with the goal of redesigning the CX for the customers’ delight. This exercise is ideally done together with real customers to avoid biases from participating executives.

Many participants in those workshops decided to do customer journey mapping themselves without real customers, which expectedly was fraught with biases and optimistic judgment about their customers’ experiences. This obviously resulted in flawed CX designs. Executives and managers of a company are prone to optimism bias when they judge how customers perceive their experience along the company touchpoints.

That is why it is always best to design CX with the customer in mind and presence. Customer journey mapping as an exercise should be exhaustive which can only be achieved with actual customers. It should be performed with different customer personas, which are characters created to represent the different user types within your targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use your product or service.

CX design tactics should make sure that front-end customer interfaces are well integrated into the back-end processes, just like the grocery app example that I gave, which failed to tie the great ordering experience with the inventory management of the company. More importantly, customer journey maps should be validated from time to time with actual customers, to validate certain assumptions previously adopted by the company and to implement new experience design tactics.

CX will be the most important competitive dimension during these times where companies which provide the best CX will outperform those that fail to listen to their customers.

 

Reynaldo C. Lugtu, Jr. is CEO of Hungry Workhorse Consulting, a digital and culture transformation consulting firm. He is the Chair of the ICT Committee of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX). He is Fellow at the US-based Institute for Digital Transformation. He teaches strategic management in the MBA Program of De La Salle University

rey.lugtu@hungryworkhorse.com

Hurdles loom in Congress for hiring foreigners

THE House Committee on Labor and Employment has approved a proposal to require a so-called “labor market test” before foreigners are issued work permits to ensure that no similarly-qualified Filipinos are available for employment.

On Wednesday, the committee approved the consolidation of bills seeking to regulate foreign employment in the Philippines.

“There is a motion to consolidate House bills 4514, 5472 and 829 subject to style and incorporating recommendations if any… the motion is hereby approved,” according to the panel’s chairman, Representative Enrico A. Pineda of the 1-PACMAN party-list.

The unnumbered measure consolidating the bills seeks to amend the Labor Code of the Philippines in the matter of issuing employment permits to foreign nationals.

It proposes to grant employment permits to non-resident foreign nationals “subject to the labor market test based on the non-availability of a qualified and willing Filipino national.”

The bill gives the Secretary of Labor the authority to exempt foreign nationals from the labor market test if warranted by law.

The Department of Labor and Employment has conducted labor market studies prior to the issuing employment permits on the strength of department orders and other guidelines. — Gillian M. Cortez

Super Mario leaps into real world in Universal Studios park launch

OSAKA —  Universal Studios Japan (USJ) opens on Thursday its $550-million, pandemic-delayed Super Mario-themed attraction in a major leap by games maker Nintendo Co. Ltd beyond the virtual world.

The addition in Osaka bulks up USJ’s roster of franchises, which include Minions and Jurassic Park, in its rivalry with Disney, with the moustachioed plumber also coming to other Universal parks worldwide.

Entering through a giant warp pipe, visitors to Super Nintendo World, a real-world version of games creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s Mushroom Kingdom, are met with chomping piranha plants, punchable coin blocks and a flag-topped Mount Beanpole. At the attraction, whose opening was delayed repeatedly from last summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, visitors can buy a $30 “power-up band” which syncs with the park’s app to rank them as they gather coins and defeat baddies.

The wristband draws on the interactive wands in the Harry Potter attraction and Nintendo’s tradition of tactile gaming gadgets and aims to capitalize on Mario’s generation-spanning appeal to drive repeat visits to the park. — Reuters