Japanese leisure corporation, Oriental Land Co, has reported growth in its theme park and hotel segments in the six months ending in September (the first half of the fiscal year).
Oriental Land Co owns and operates the Tokyo Disney Resort which includes two theme parks, four Disney hotels and six non-Disney hotels.
The theme park segment of OLC saw an 8.3% increase in net sales during the half compared to the same period last year.
Attendance was up by 5% to 15.52 million. This was fuelled by celebrations for Tokyo Disney Resort’s 35th anniversary. Net sales per guest also increased with a 4.1% increase in merchandise sales. There was a strong surge in sales of anniversary related merchandise.
There was also a 9.9% increase in net sales for the hotel segment – largely fuelled by the Disney hotels. This is a trend echoed by Merlin, in their Q3 results they reported that accommodation revenue grew by 27.7%. This reflects the continued success of the resortpositioning strategy towards themed accommodation.
OLC’s 2020 Medium Term Plan is currently underway. The company will strengthen “novelty” and “comfort” with the introduction of new products. As part of this, the company opened the Nemo and Friends SeaRider and will open Soaring: Fantastic Flight.
The company is also planning additional large-scale investment projects with an investment amount of approximately ¥75.0 billion. The company is also utilising IT, they developed the Tokyo Disney Resort app, which allows visitors to make bookings and see waiting time.
Last week, NBCUniversal announced their third quarter revenue from Theme Parks decreased 1.4% to $1.5 billion. This was attributed to severe weather and natural disasters in Japan.
Japan experienced a number of catastrophic weather events this summer. 225 were killed by historic rainfall in July which was followed by an extreme heatwave.
Image courtesy Tokyo Disney Resort
