Valo Motion, a pioneer in combining interactive technology with physical activities, has gathered data which will assist activity park operators in running more competitive and cutting-edge operations.
The firm says that as more people visit theme parks and attractions after COVID, operators must place more emphasis on attractions that can produce digital utilisation reports to survive and compete in a shifting market.
Since spring 2021, there has been a significant increase in utilisation, according to Valo Motion’s data, attributed to an accumulation of more than 900 devices globally. The use of several machines has increased by 30% since the outbreak. Additionally, with visitors eager to return to parks, park operators in the US informed the business that they are earning 15% to 20% more revenue than they were before the outbreak.
According to Valo Motion’s head of sales Sven Rösch: “Operating a park well isn’t easy, and it’s something that operators worry about every day. Many activity parks have not yet shifted to full digitalization – they don’t know how their attractions are performing.
“This means that knowing things like where and when to put staff when to clean, what attractions are popular and so on comes down to guessing, which then results in increased headaches and the loss of time and money for their businesses.”
Activity growth
The market for activity parks has undergone a significant shift recently as a result of the pandemic, coming to a halt for many operators in 2020 and fluctuating the following year, before finally seeing a return to normal levels in 2022.
Data on the average number of hours per day that Valo Motion’s games are played globally has been made available, demonstrating how the epidemic changed usage dramatically. Currently, across all locations, games are played for around 3,000 hours per day, or 125 days.
Meeting generational demands
It’s crucial that operators take note of the evolving needs of the young people who visit parks. Digital entertainment is what members of Generation Z and Alpha, who grew up with it in their hands and at home, expect when they go out to have fun. Parks that formerly relied on conventional, analogue attractions must change if they are to stay competitive and entice a younger audience.
“The biggest competitor our operators have is not the leisure venue across the street, it’s home entertainment,” adds Rösch.
“[For instance], a video game like Fortnite can hit over 30 million players a day, and those players are our prime target audience. Video games are a major competitor. By digitalizing parks, operators are appealing to today’s kids while simultaneously optimizing the park by substantially increasing the information they have to run a healthy business.
“This is a challenging shift for an industry that has relied on traditional attractions for ages, but this is what operators need to do if they want completely new insight into how to run their businesses in the modern world.”
The power of data
Research for Forbes claims that businesses of all sizes, from Fortune 500 organisations to startups, are entering the era of digital transformation. Although the activity park sector has been hesitant to adopt digital solutions, these enterprises are beginning to adopt the same cutting-edge technologies that other sectors enjoy. Companies may observe their operations more precisely and create company goals much more easily by utilising digitalization and gathering data.
Valo Motion CEO, Raine Kajastila adds: “This is a different market than it was only 3 years ago, and to adapt to the changes, parks need that digital data and they also need to provide digital attractions to the younger generation.
“Our data shows that kids love our digital attractions because the play rate is a great extent higher than the POS at the parks. This means people are buying a ticket to the park and playing our games numerous times. By providing these solutions, we could actually change how operators work and hopefully encourage the industry to shift towards digitalization for better business models.”
“We also measure our success with the data, and the most important metric is how many players we move every day. Now we can have 140,000 plays in a day globally. To really make an impact, our next major goal is to reach one million fun-filled and active plays per day.”
Valo Motion recently won an IAAPA Brass Ring Award for Valo Arena, with the mixed reality playground being awarded in the category of Best New Product, Virtual and Augmented Reality category.
