Can a popular theme park create a popular hotel?

Visual China.

Text |Milestones.

Meituan's data also confirms the popularity of theme parks. According to the data, during the Spring Festival, the number of orders for theme parks ranked first among all kinds of tourist attractions. There is a long queue in front of the attractions at Universal Beijing Resort; 5 days before the Spring Festival holiday, the highest number of visitors to the park in a single day reached 510,000, the number of visitors increased by more than 98% year-on-year. At the same time, according to the data disclosed by Haichang Ocean Park on February 19, the cumulative number of tourists received during the Spring Festival exceeded 750,000, an increase of more than 130% compared with the Spring Festival in 2019, and the "double hotels" of Shanghai Haichang Ultraman Theme Hotel and Ocean Resort Hotel were all fully booked during the Spring Festival, with an occupancy rate of 100% for 20 consecutive days.

It can be seen that the popularity of the park has become an indisputable fact to help the improvement of the cultural and tourism economy. In this context, the theme park supporting hotel market is also showing a vibrant state.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, Shougang No. 1 blast furnace SOREAL Science Fiction Park was officially opened for business. With a construction area of about 20,000 square meters, the project retains the original structure of the blast furnace and the external industrial building style to the greatest extent, and combines industrial heritage with XR technology, making it the world's first fully immersive space exploration theme complex. CCTV's "News Network" mentioned in a special report on a series of cultural activities in the capital Beijing New Year that Shougang Park has nearly 30,000 visitors every day.

Immediately afterwards, Taizhou Linhai bear-infested happy harbor was officially opened on the third day of the Lunar New Year (February 12), it is the first bear-infested IP-based amusement park built by Huaqiang Fangte, which is equipped with water and land parks, open commercial blocks, more than 30 indoor and outdoor amusement projects and hotels, and has a large number of characteristic performing arts, leisure landscapes, trendy shops, catering and delicacies. Although there is no post-opening passenger flow data, it is understood that the park is designed to receive more than 3 million visitors per year.

Further back, the country's first Ultraman-themed town officially opened in Zhengzhou on January 27, in time to meet the audience on the eve of the Spring Festival.

Milestone observed that in addition to the above-mentioned projects that opened around the first holiday, the number of parks in the monthly contracts and newly started cultural tourism projects is growing, and the themes are further enriched and diversified.

Judging from the cultural tourism projects signed in January 2024 alone, among the 88 projects in total, there are many theme parks with high capital investment. Yunnan Mangshi Sky City Resort has an investment of 1 billion yuan; The investment amount of Zhejiang Quzhou Ocean World reached 3800 million yuan; The investment amount of Guangdong Shaoguan Frozen Culture, Sports and Entertainment Industry Project reached 1800 million yuan; The investment amount of Koala 100 Dream Park in Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province has reached 80 million yuan ......

In addition, popular projects that have received wide attention are also emerging one after another. For example, the Anmin Mountain Wildlife Park project in Liangshan County, Jining City, Shandong Province will be built into a wildlife theme park with "deep integration of Water Margin culture and animal experience"; Chongqing Yubei Hot Spring Park will create a new category of "land cruise" cultural tourism and create a new trend of "hot spring + paradise" urban micro-vacation; The Guangdong Maoming Haichang Ocean Park project is scheduled to officially start construction this year, with a total investment of about 6 billion yuan; Hangzhou China Ice and Snow Lin'an Tus-Ice and Snow Glory City project plot was delisted, with a total investment of about 3 billion yuan, aiming to build an indoor ice and snow park with large scale, high slope drop, long slope and rich ice and snow projects in Zhejiang Province; Zhongshan OCT Happy Coast is expected to open in mid-2024 and will become the first open park ...... in the Bay Area with the theme of "Future Technology" and "Jungle Exploration".

There is no doubt that theme parks have matured after decades of turbulent development in China. It has not only completed the transformation from play and viewing to theme entertainment, but also completed the transformation from a single ticket revenue to a diversified revenue model. At the same time, it is worth noting that after the strong entry of international brands such as Disneyland and Universal Studios into China, it has not only brought fresh vitality to the Chinese theme park market, but also urged home-grown theme parks to try to give full play to their subjective initiative and come up with new operational ideas. This can be seen from the above-mentioned cases, where more and more localized theme park content is beginning to emerge and try to stand out in the competition for key investments.

Behind the attention of the cultural tourism market in various places, the cake of the park's supporting hotels is also becoming more and more gold-absorbing. To a certain extent, as a companion product of the park, the supporting hotel will help the theme park realize the one-stop service of tourism and accommodation, improve the play and accommodation experience, and help increase the length of stay of customers, thereby driving a new round of consumption.

Judging from the current market, Disney, Universal Studios, Huaqiang Fangte, and Chimelong, which have been in the top echelon, already have the strength to build their own supporting hotels. At the same time, Disney and Universal Studios are even better in supporting hotel operations.

Taking Disney as an example, with its strong attraction, it is not only one of the best in the country in terms of daily passenger flow, but also sold out of relevant suites and accommodation in hotels during holidays, and it is common for housing prices to rise. Last year.

Five. During the 1st and 11th holidays, the soaring room prices once became a hot topic. For example, the luxury garden view twin room during the May Day period is priced at 12,232 yuan per night, and the ** runs through the entire May Day holiday, which is 4 times that of non-holidays.

Housing prices are high but demand outstrips supply, which has also forced Disney hotels to expand further. At the end of August last year, Shanghai Disney Resort announced the official expansion of its third theme hotel, following the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel and Toy Story Hotel, which will add a new theme style to the "Disney Hotels" section to provide guests with more accommodation options. In fact, it is not difficult to understand that the theme suite of the Disney Hotel is not simply integrating IP elements, but has spent ingenuity in the design, and at the same time, it has also undergone multiple rounds of iterative upgrades in the gameplay, such as Disney friends in the hotel lobby, you can take photos with guests;Another example is the privilege of purchasing specially selected products, time-based parent-child activities, excellent fireworks viewing spots, and so on.

Taking Universal Studios as an example, after opening in 2021, it has two supporting hotels, Universal Studios Grand Hotel and NUO Resort Hotel. Among them, the Universal Studios Grand Hotel is designed in the style of Hollywood, aiming to immerse visitors in the infinite charm of Hollywood. This is undoubtedly the closest place to the dream for countless Hollywood fans.

Because of this, when it comes to holidays, Universal Studios Hotel also frequently stages a prosperous scene of room price increase but overcrowding. During last year's May Day, it was reported that the individual suite room types of the two hotels once reached more than 20,000 yuan a night. But despite this, most of the room types in the two official hotels have been fully booked on May Day. Taking NUO Resort Hotel as an example, on April 29 last year, seven regular room types of the hotel were sold out on Ctrip, including a luxury family suite with a maximum of 8,374 yuan per night.

Affected by the passenger flow of the park, the premium brought by the supporting hotels has also made many hotel brands aim at this piece of fat and try to "grab food" with cost performance. In the vicinity of Shanghai Disneyland, Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott, Starway, Narada Vacation, Greenland PARK, etc., while near Universal Studios, there are well-known hotel brands at home and abroad, such as Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, InterContinental, Wanda, Hyatt, Coffe, and Orange.

Behind the seemingly thriving, it also needs to be looked at rationally. For example, Chimelong Group, which is keen to build its own hotel brand, although it has nine hotels with eight themes such as pandas, penguins, circus, and spaceships near Chimelong Resort, and is also favored by tourists because of its specific style, but overall, compared with Disney hotels and Universal Studios hotels that are often mixed in hot searches, the sense of presence is weak, and there is still great room for growth to improve. Of course, in addition to the above-mentioned big players, there are more theme park supporting hotels that are not as comfortable as imagined, in addition to the overflow of holiday traffic, many are trapped by reality.

First of all, although the content of theme parks is constantly enriched, many parks focus on parent-child customers, because students have a long learning cycle, the off-season is relatively long, fortunately, theme parks are also sinking, such as the above-mentioned many preparation cases, weekend peripheral tours are also expected to make up for this shortcoming, but the specific effect, still need time to test.

Secondly, the large-scale low-quality and shoddy imitation did not understand the differentiation of the theme supporting hotels, thinking that simply engaging in some decorations, carpets, and cushions was to complete the linkage with the theme, resulting in serious homogenization, and many consumers could not really have a deep check-in experience.

Finally, the IP influence of many theme parks is weak and they cannot compete with international popular IPs, and only one Disney has the Mickey Mouse series, Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Aladdin, Toy Story, Frozen, Zootopia and other anime IPs. The point is that Disney is also constantly acquiring popular anime IPs to further expand its advantages. It can be seen that this polarization is also widening the gap between the two parks and other parks, and the corresponding supporting hotels have a longer way to go.

Although the supporting hotels of the park depend on the rise and fall of the theme park to a certain extent, when we remove this objective factor and try to give these local parks a more adequate growth cycle in terms of operation, how should the supporting hotels be built, so as to hopefully break the situation and achieve new explosions? In the view of the milestone, there can be the following directions.

As we all know, the park IP is the one that can best reflect its core values, connect park amusement projects, and arouse consumers' emotional resonance. The IP element organically connects the park and the hotel, becoming an overall closed-loop experience, allowing visitors to leave the park without "playing", and seamlessly connecting with the "dream experience" of visitors.

Therefore, in the creation of theme rooms, we can not simply focus on decoration, but also work on in-depth experience. For example, theme parks involving animation or film and television drama IP can increase interaction with IP characters in the park's supporting hotels, especially some domestic IPs that need to be deeply understood by consumers, such as Super Peter Pan introduced by OCT Group and "Panda Triplets" launched by Chimelong Resort. These are not well-known IPs, and hotels should complement each other with the functions of the park, and work together to continue the IP story at some more flexible and meticulous levels, so as to form a 1+1>2 win-win situation.

At the same time, it also provides thinking and reference for the park with the theme of cultural IP as the core that is still entering in the future, the long-standing Chinese culture has its own characteristics, and those intangible cultural heritage cultures contain a lot of wonderful handmade experiences.

As mentioned above, the establishment of a hotel in the park is a one-stop shop for customers to help increase the length of their stay. Then the linkage between the two sides to fight for some unique privileges for customers will undoubtedly bring the profitability of the two to a new height. For example, booking tickets + hotels can provide consumers with significant discounts;For another example, the cooperation between the two can allow consumers to enter the park in advance and enjoy VIP treatment. This kind of real money** discount will enhance the perceived added value of the theme park supporting hotels, and will also attract more consumers to stay.

In addition, the hotel can also be equipped with a VIP channel to the park, providing free round-trip shuttle bus to the central scenic spot, which not only greatly saves visitors' time and energy in transportation, but also does not have to queue up with other tourists at the entrance of the park to enter, avoiding crowding and waiting to exhaust the amusement mood.

Whether it's Disney or Universal Studios, it's a commendable approach in this regard. Staying at the Disneyland Hotel, you can enter the park in advance and have a special car to pick you up, while staying at Universal Studios Hotel, consumers can not only enjoy a high-quality stay experience, but also enjoy the "discounts" of the park, which makes many consumers sigh "great value for money". According to data disclosed by Universal Beijing Resort, since last year, Universal Studios has been 1The sales of 5-day tickets and 2-day tickets increased by nearly 5% year-on-year, and the ** of "hotel + tickets" increased by 228%.

Of course, the added value of staying in a hotel is not limited to these, and what new strategies can be developed at other levels is also a new idea worth in-depth research and continuous learning.

Excellent IP doesn't happen overnight. The reason why Disney has been able to endure and appeal to customers of all ages is that it has been polished for decades and the market is quite mature. And these rising stars in China still need time to polish. However, as Disney and Universal Studios have taken root and grown in China, it has also provided an opportunity for the domestic market to learn and learn from each other, and can use the standards of international first-line brands to benchmark and improve, accelerate the transformation of domestic theme parks to the field of technology, digitalization and informatization, and continuously improve tourism service standards and management standards.

For the hotels in this, the same is true, by constantly learning from high-quality benchmark works, and internalizing their own exclusive **, so as to consolidate their hard power.

It is undeniable that Paradise Hotels may face peak and trough periods of customer flow more often than ordinary business hotels in the market, and how to deal with the operation of hotels at different times is also a lesson that this type of hotel brand needs to think deeply.

Write at the end:

Wu Liyun, an associate professor at the China Academy of Culture and Tourism Industry, once said, "The rise of theme park consumption is in line with the general trend of China's tourism development, and it may usher in a new round of accelerated industrial agglomeration and market concentration in the future." Today's proliferating paradises bear this out. But in the next step, it remains to be seen whether the supporting hotels in the park can run out of hits!