The latest news, Asia's first and the world's largest Peppa Pig outdoor theme park project will be located in Changxing Island, Chongming District, Shanghai, and is expected to be completed and opened in 2027. The LEGOLAND resort in Shanghai's Jinshan District will also usher in a trial operation next spring, and the park will officially open in summer.
With the rapid recovery of the cultural tourism market, theme parks have attracted much attention as an important format of "cultural tourism +". According to McKinsey's research report, as of the end of last year, the market size of domestic theme parks has ranked second in the world.
However, the homogenization of large-scale theme parks still exists. How to unleash the potential of the park economy?
Courtesy of Visual China
Theme parks are making a strong comeback
On April 24, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism revealed that Asia's first and the world's largest Peppa Pig outdoor theme park project will be located on Changxing Island, Chongming District, Shanghai, covering an area of 290 acres, and is expected to be completed and opened in 2027.
In addition, the Legoland Resort located in Jinshan District, Shanghai also came to the latest news: at present, more than half of the construction projects in the park are underway, and all civil works and installation of some amusement facilities will be completed by the end of the year, and the trial operation will be carried out in the spring of next year, and the park will be officially opened in the summer.
Shanghai Disney Resort revealed that after "Zootopia", Disney will also build a new park. It is understood that the resort has started the preliminary construction preparations for the new attraction, which will be adjacent to the "Zootopia" theme park, which is still in the preliminary planning stage.
With the rapid recovery of the cultural tourism market, theme parks, as an important format of "cultural tourism +", have also entered a period of rapid development. Theme parks in many places across the country have started the construction of "horse racing".
On November 20 last year, the world's first and largest Frozen-themed park, Frozen World, officially opened at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort. On December 20 last year, Shanghai Disneyland's eighth theme park, the world's first "Zootopia" theme park, officially opened. The construction of parks, towns and hotels in Jining, Linhai, Yichun, Ningbo and other places has been rapidly promoted, among which Linhai Bear Infested Happy Harbor was officially put into operation on February 12 this year, setting a record of 80,000 people on the first day of opening......
Lin Huanjie, president of the China Theme Park Research Institute, said that theme parks can enhance the interaction and participation of visitors, provide experiential entertainment projects, and meet the escalating needs of tourists. Theme parks built by major well-known IPs have stimulated tourists' consumption desires with their various creative stimulation projects and derivative products. The rise of the parent-child travel market has made it even more popular with parents and children. Theme parks are an important carrier of the cultural tourism industry, and its popularity has also brought huge passenger flow to the local accommodation, catering and other industries, and achieved considerable consumption growth. Lin Huanjie said that according to relevant calculations, 1 yuan of theme park consumption will drive 12 yuan to 15 yuan of upstream and downstream industry consumption.
According to CIC Research, after years of development, the economic market size of mainland amusement parks has climbed to the second place in the world, with a market size of nearly 60 billion yuan in 2023 and is expected to exceed 110 billion yuan in 2028.
Courtesy of Visual China
Continuing to innovate IP is challenging
The number of theme parks in China continues to rise, but there are still difficulties in making profits due to insufficient IP content and imperfect industrial chains.
More and more international IPs are entering the Chinese market, and at the same time, local amusement parks are also making efforts. Film and television companies, technology companies and even bubble tea shops with IP advantages are all laying out theme park tracks, but how to activate IP and let IP play a greater value is the key.
Internationally, taking Disney as an example, tickets account for only about 30%, and more revenue comes from secondary consumption of catering, accommodation and derivatives retail. However, 70% of the ticket revenue of local theme parks has not yet formed an industrial chain.
"Monkey King, Liao Zhai, Dream of Red Mansions...... The mainland has never lacked excellent stories and materials, but what it lacks is a mature and complete industrial chain. Zhao Yang, President of Maichi Culture, observed that due to a lack of understanding of park operations, many emerging theme parks directly copied them when learning from foreign experiences. "The feasibility and return on investment of the project were not fully judged when the equipment was invested, and it ended up in a loss. ”
Taking Huaqiang Fantawild as an example, it used 10 years to create the IP "Bear Infested", but since then, it has also faced considerable challenges in continuous IP innovation. Guosen Securities Research Report believes that for Chinese theme parks, self-made IP is necessary and necessary in the long run, but it needs the help of many factors such as the gradual maturity of local film and television animation technology and the deepening of local consumer cultural identity, which often takes a long time, and at the same time, it is also the precipitation and accumulation of all aspects of relevant operating entities.
The swarm of authorizations has also increased homogeneous competition. In terms of IP live entertainment licensing, unlike IP product licensing, live entertainment licensing has a wider scope and richer business formats. Zhao Yang said: "The creation of IP in China started relatively late, and the current licensing format is not clear. We often see a swarm of authorization by domestic IP parties, which leads to the blind expansion of content in the later stage, leading to homogeneous competition among different formats. ”
As people's requirements for experience increase, insufficient IP power or poor follow-up operations may lead to eventual failure. In this regard, Zhao Yang believes that it has now entered the stage of selecting high-quality projects, "including the government not only focusing on solicitation when investing, but hoping to attract people through high-quality projects, so that there will be better revenue." ”
Courtesy of Visual China
Entered the 3.0 theme creative stage
Zhao Yang said that China's theme parks have evolved from relying on large-scale thrilling amusement facilities to the 2.0 stage of IP content, and are now accelerating into the 3.0 theme creative stage.
For theme parks, the "traffic" of new media platforms is more compatible with new media channels such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and multi-form marketing activities have become a new tool for theme parks to attract traffic. Taking Xuzhou Fantawild Park, which opened on July 18, 2023, as an example, Huaqiang Fantawild adopted online and offline multi-channel parallel promotion to continue to speak to the media, the public and target customers, effectively enhancing the brand market voice.
With the integration of technology and cultural tourism, consumer needs are becoming more and more personalized, and the trend of theme parks is becoming more and more obvious. For example, in the Zhuhai Chimelong spacecraft "Bermuda Adventure" curved dome dynamic cinema project, visitors can immerse themselves in the ocean adventure on the ride-on dynamic simulation device, feel the waves surging and the storm raging, as if they are in the center of the storm.
With the development of AI and other technologies, theme parks have also entered a stage where technology leads and increases stickiness through online and offline interactions. For example, big data is used to display queue times in real time, and VR is used to increase immersion.
Wu Dan, the person in charge of the "Guangdong Cultural Tourism Interest Camp", reminded that in addition to the core of "hard-core technology", the cultural tourism industry also has its special features in high-quality development based on its characteristics of life and comprehensive consumption. The first is the exploration of soft productivity such as humanities, art, creativity and even human sensibility, such as creating higher-quality leisure scenes and spiritual feelings through aesthetic expression. Second, the insight and grasp of future needs should also be at the forefront. No matter what kind of innovation you do, it should be based on real market changes, trend judgment and local analysis.
"The park needs to make visitors feel like they have really entered another world and experience a completely different scene from the real world, which is the core of the park's creation, that is, the ability to tell stories. Zhao Yang said.
Lin Huanjie also suggested that theme parks should continue to create new advantages, tell new stories, and cultivate new markets. The good shaping of localized IP will raise the development ceiling of domestic theme parks and increase the revisit rate of consumer theme parks.
Zhang Liya tidying up