Zona El Parking, Alicante's newest party venue, is now up and running with an extensive sound and lighting system tailored to suit individual areas.

With its hot summers and extremely mild winters, it is no surprise that the seaside city of Torrevieja on the Spanish Costa Blanca is hugely popular with tourists and ex pats, particularly those from northern European countries like Britain, Ireland and Germany. There are also plenty of Spaniards with second homes in the city, which is renowned for its cosmopolitan vibe and for doing its upmost to offer holiday makers a good time.

No wonder, then, that Grupo Vela Beach, a company specialising in restaurants and nightlife, has set up in Torrevieja and is rapidly growing its portfolio of businesses with a view to appealing to both long term residents and seasonal tourists.

Established in 2008 and voted Torrevieja's Innovative Company of the Year in 2018, Grupo Vela Beach already has two Mediterranean-style restaurants on the Torrevieja seafront, a Mediterranean-Japanese fusion restaurant, a gourmet burger restaurant and the Velice Discoteca, one of the largest discos on the Costa Blanca. But in recent months it has significantly added to this total by opening Zona El Parking, a 3000 square meter enclosure dedicated to people who want to eat, drink and party.

Located in the Casagrande Polygon directly in front of the Velice Discoteca, Zona El Parking has four pubs offering very different ambiences and musical styles so that they appeal to the widest possible clientele. There is also a large outdoor garden area with a panoramic terrace, ample parking for up to 300 cars and the Insatiable restaurant, which is open every day offering a variety of tapas, traditional dishes and a charcoal BBQ grill. Admission to Zona El Parking is free and the leisure area is open throughout the summer season and on weekends and holidays the rest of the year. 

To ensure that Zona El Parking delivered a fantastic user experience, Grupo Vela Beach commissioned Alicante-based AV installation and events company RVS Audiovisual Services to install the necessary sound and lighting equipment.

"Grupo Vela Beach chose us because we had previously worked together on other venues", says RVS director Ruben Vidal Pinoso. "We have a lot of expertise in carrying out fixed installations, from pubs and discos to multimedia classrooms in schools and training rooms. We can also specify the right sound and lighting equipment for each venue, including loudspeakers, microphones, mixers, spotlights, moving heads etc".

Pinoso adds that the timeframe on this project was tight - the entire installation had to be completed in just three weeks to ensure that the complex was ready for the start of the tourist season. 

"To meet the deadline we knew we needed reliable partners who could deliver the equipment we wanted on time and in good working order. The equipment list was quite extensive and included audio and lighting products, so we chose Equipson as our main manufacturer because they offer a range that covered everything we needed to complete this task."

Based in Valencia, Equipson SA is a manufacturer and supplier of audio, lighting and installation products, as well as control systems, lifters, trusses, cables and accessories. The company groups most of its audio and lighting products.

"We choose Equipson for several reasons, not least the quality and price of its products and the security it offered in terms of sales and after sales service",Pinoso says. "By using products from the WORK PRO range and also including some products from Equipson's  MARK brand, we were able to cover the audio and lighting requirements of all but one area of the complex"

On the audio spec sheet for the complex were numerous WORK PRO amplifiers, Ethernet DSP audio processors, power distributors and loudspeakers- nearly 80 in total. These ranged from WORK PRO Neo S8 Self Powered and SuW Z15 subwoofers through to a large number of speakers from WORK PRO's Mino passive and SoundNut pendant loudspeaker ranges. In each case the loudspeakers were chosen for their suitability to the space, taking into account acoustic challenges such as high ceiling structures and reverberant sound fields, so that musical clarity and voice intelligibility remained high throughout.

With the lighting systems, RVS Audiovisual Services specified Equipson WORK PRO and MARK projectors, fog machines, lighting bars, moving heads and lighting beams. These incorporate the latest LED technology for an intense and varied colour palette, as well as high performance motors that allow the lights to tilt and pan at very fast speeds.

"WORK PRO and MARK systems went into the Insatiable restaurant, the Maremagna disco pub, the Green Limbo garden venue and the Split Terrace area", Pinoso says. "We also used 60 MARK Mbar 381ip LED bar lights on the main façade to dress the entire building in blue light, which is Grupo Vela Beach's corporate colour."

Although this was a large installation, it was relatively straightforward. Pinoso says the support he received from Equipson made it even easier because the company's engineering staff were available at all times to answer any technical queries.

"We had no issues with any of the systems because the products all worked perfectly",he says. "The most complex system we installed was in the restaurant because this was a very large area with exaggerated high ceilings. Our solution was to use hanging projectors and hanging 10" speaker cones that gave exceptional coverage and resulted in a very good sound"

Zona El Parking officially opened in 2019 and has proved to be a huge success for Grupo Velo Beach.

"Everyone is really happy with the outcome and we are particularly pleased that a project of this size was completed so smoothly and with such good results", Pinoso adds. "Getting the sound and lighting right is very important if you want to give customers a great experience and, with Equipson?s help, we think we have achieved that".