How to Make It in the Attractions Industry, Sun Group, Asia’s Potential, & Staffing Challenges
Won here. This is my interview with my friend Daan Duijm, an operational wunderkind whose career has taken him across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Here we cover a wide range of topics, including his inspirational beginnings (lots of hustle!) in the industry, his work with one of Vietnam’s largest theme park and real […]
The Inside Story of the Most Expensive Theme Park Ever Built
Won here. I had always wanted to learn about Sanrio Puroland, an indoor theme park in Tokyo opened in 1990. In recent years multiple Hello Kitty theme parks, cafes, and other branded attractions have opened. But Puroland was the first. The attraction has always loomed large in my imagination. It was built during Japan’s boom […]
Attraction Investment Cost Tracker: 2017-present
Updated as of October 2023. Encompassing everything from theme parks to zoos, museums to resorts, the attractions industry plays a pivotal role in the global tourism and entertainment sectors. Our newly unveiled Attraction Investments Tracker is a dedicated effort to collect cost and budget data for every major announced attraction around the world. Including data […]
Ever Glorious, Ever Ambitious, Ever Grand
At its height, Evergrande Group was the largest real estate developer in the world, with contracted sales amounting to more than 700 billion RMB (~$100 billion) in 2020, and a billion square feet under construction at nearly 800 projects around China. Appropriately for its ambitions, Evergrande was also in the stages of building theme parks […]
A History of Theme Parks
“Location-based” entertainment for the masses has been around a long time; Ancient Rome is remembered for their games of gladiatorial combat and sporting events in the Colosseum, the Mayans played a ballgame called pitz in large stadiums, and medieval Europe regularly hosted carnivals and fairs centered around religious holidays and markets. All of these forms […]
The Saudi Gigaprojects
Once primarily of appeal to religious tourists, Saudi Arabia is now positioning itself to become the ultimate leisure destination. Under the Vision 2030 Plan, launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2016, the kingdom is focused on diversifying its economy away from a reliance on oil revenues. The tourism and leisure industry are expected […]
The Reality of Pen Rates
We have a love-hate relationship with penetration rates. As you might be aware, penetration rate methodology is the predominant method used to forecast attendance at theme parks, and conduct feasibility studies in the attractions field. But, it suffers from almost anything you can imagine about a quantitative method: it’s imprecise, has no standard definition among […]
The Japanese Theme Park Bubble
Japan in the 1980s was a legendary time. The country experienced a stock market and property boom the likes of which has never been duplicated. The Nikkei stock index hit a peak of over 37,000 in 1989 and a trailing P/E ratio of 60x. It was an explosive boom, followed by a long bust: 30 […]
How to Size an Attraction (of Any Kind)
Sizing an attraction correctly is one of the primary issues in the planning phases of development. Size too small, and operations will suffer during peak days, leaving money on the table. Size too large, and you’re simply overbuilt – and wasted money. So how do we build an attraction to the right size? As with […]
An Introduction to Indoor Entertainment
This post is a brief primer of the indoor theme parks of the world along the lines of revenues, size, visitation, and development costs. This is a broad category that benefits from further segmentation, as it spans 1,000 sqm playrooms to 100,000 sqm mega theme parks in their own right, such as the Warner Brothers […]
