Auckland’s Sky Jump To Have Look-Alike In Macau

Auckland’s Sky Jump To Have Look-Alike In Macau

Sky Jump, one of New Zealand’s most successful tourism adventure products, is to have a look-alike in Macau, China. Opening of the Macau Sky Jump is scheduled for early July this year and a high profile Chinese celebrity is tipped to take the first leap.
”Sky Jump has been enormously popular here in Auckland and we’re delighted to see Kiwi expertise and innovation being exported internationally,” said SKYCITY Attractions Manager Allison Lawton.

Ms Lawton says the Macau venue will help raise the global profile of Auckland’s Sky Jump.

The Macau Sky Jump will be operated by AJ Hackett International using the same technology invented here in New Zealand. Macau’s Sky Jump system is currently being developed locally by Jump Technics Ltd and will be exported along with Jump Technics staff, who will travel to Macau to train local “jump masters” to operate the system in the build up to launch.

Managing Director, AJ Hackett International, Susan Basterfield, says it’s going to be very exciting to watch how the Chinese will react.

“It’s totally different to anything they will have seen and experienced. It’s going to blow the Chinese mind!”

A number of New Zealand companies were involved in the design and construction of Macau’s SkyTower, which was modeled on Auckland’s. Macau’s SkyTower opened in 2001 and is the official “sister” tower to Auckland’s.

“The tower in Macau is run with a similar philosophy to New Zealand’s. We have a number of adventure tourism offerings on our SkyTower which generate appeal over and above being simply an observation tower,” says Basterfield. To date over 32,000 people have made Sky Jumps at Auckland’s Sky Tower, ranging in age from 10 to 91, since the operation opened in December 2000. High profile personalities to complete the feat include Tom Cruise, Billy Connolly and Rove McManus, as well as New Zealand’s own Dick Hubbard, Lucy Lawless, Temuera Morrison and Cliff Curtis.

Sky Tower is New Zealand’s most popular paid tourist attraction with one in every two international visitors to Auckland making the trip up it.

Sky Jump Managing Director, Steve Weidmann, was instrumental in the creation of Sky Jump and developed the equipment. He was also one of the first people to test the prototype jump in the Waitomo caves and is pleased with the association with AJ Hackett International.

“AJ actually just came up to me off the street and we discussed the idea to operate Sky Jump in Macau.

“They (AJ Hackett) already own and operate a number of other tourism adventure attractions on Macau’s SkyTower so it made sense for us to work with them in a totally new market for us, that they are used to.

“We have actually been approached by a number of countries with tall structures to set up Sky Jump, but the AJ Hackett proposal for Macau is the only one we’ve decided to go with so far.

“It’s an exciting association for both companies. We both have that Kiwi enterprise sprit, historical safety knowledge and mutual respect,” he says.

ENDS

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