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Immotion to open more VR Experience Centres

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Immotion, the UK-based virtual reality ‘out of home’ entertainment specialist, is to open a number of new ImmotionVR Experience Centres around the world. These will include its first outlet in Middle East as well a big push into the United States.

In the UK, Immotion will open a further five sites before the end of 2018. This will bring the total number of ImmotionVR Experience Centres in the country to 12. Two of these, at Braehead in Glasgow and the Metro Centre in Newcastle, will be located at sites owned by shopping centre operator Intu. The other three will be at London Designer Outlet (Wembley Park), The Brunel in Swindon and Star City, Birmingham.

Big potential in the UK and USA

The Immotion Group believes there are opportunities to open VR experience centres in most primary shopping malls in the UK and USA. Currently it has one test site in the USA. However, the company has a target for 50 UK sites and 100 in the USA within the next 24 months.

Immotion has also secured two new concession partners. It already has VR seats operating as concessions at Legoland Discovery Centres in Boston (USA) and Manchester (UK), as well as Genting Resorts World in Birmingham (UK) and the W5 Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These relationships offer valuable ancillary revenue for the partner and access to large, proven and established audiences for Immotion. By carefully selecting partners and testing formats before full roll-out, the company believes this can be an attractive channel for rapid scaling of the group.

ImmotionVR comes to Abu Dhabi

In the Middle East, Immotion has signed a major partnership with the Al Hokair Group. Starting in Abu Dhabi, the plan is to roll out of ImmotionVR Centres across the GCC countries on a revenue share basis. The leisure and hospitality group currently has 79 entertainment centres across Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Immotion Group will provide the VR equipment, marketing collateral and staff training, with Al Hokair supplying sites, staff and utilities.

Immotion has also entered into a revenue sharing partnership with Rank Leisure in the UK. This will see the company’s new VR Racing Challenge open at a Grosvenor Casino in Manchester in early December. Further sites in the 54-strong Grosvenor chain will be added according to results.

Elsewhere in the UK, Immotion is opening two smaller sites. These will be concession partnerships with the Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare and Meet Space VR in Nottingham.

New VR content

Immotion Group continues to add new proprietary experiences to its portfolio, including two cutting-edge offerings produced in its Manchester studios. The first is Jinxed – a VR ghost train ride through a bizarre fun house. The other is second Elf Power Inc. – a magical journey alongside Santa’s elves as they deliver Christmas in their own special way.

Meanwhile Immotion’s LA studio is in the final stages of post-production for a “ground-breaking” live action VR undersea experience. Swimming with Humpbacks will stack up alongside the existing Legend of Lusca underwater experience.

The above experiences will be available in all ImmotionVR Experience Centres and selected concessions.

5-star TripAdvisor ratings

“We are very pleased with the reception our experiences are receiving from consumers,” says Immotion Group CEO, Martin Higginson. “While VR still has a long way to go, it is clearly here to stay given the five-star TripAdvisor ratings across the majority of our sites, alongside increasing numbers of returning customers. We continue to see strong interest from major leisure operators. As the only player offering quality proprietary content, motion platform and marketing solutions in multiple jurisdictions, we are quickly becoming the VR partner of choice.”

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Owen Ralph

Owen Ralph

Feature writer Owen Ralph has covered theme parks and attractions for over 20 years for publications including blooloop, Park World, World’s Fair, Interpark, Kirmes Revue and Park International. He has also served on boards/committees with IAAPA and the TEA. He grew up just 30 minutes from Blackpool (no coincidence?)

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