During the Spring Festival, every shopping mall and children's park were crowded with visitors and players. There is no doubt that vacations are the “golden period” for the amusement and leisure industry to attract tourists and get more income.   Actually, running a large-scale indoor children's park requires a high cost and the profit period is also periodic. Though the shopping mall can attract a large visitor flow, the rent, labour charges, are facility maintenance fee all have corresponding rises. All of these place lots of stress on operators. What we cannot ignore, however, is that the “golden period” of the indoor children amusement park sector is mostly at the weekends. If operators are without any excellent strength, it will be difficult for them to recoup the cost within a short time.  There is a traditional belief in the industry that is the non-standardized industry does not support a single brand to massively copy the franchise chain pattern. Every shop should have its custom operation and management. When your brand becomes more and more popular, you will open more shops. As a result, you will operate more and require higher management costs.

Following lots of discussion, some insiders with abundant experience in the online and land-based children's amusement industry have considered that to break down the traditional pattern is to change the foundation of the format for children amusement park’s. We should transform the “ticket sales” into the “flow value-added pattern”. Generally, the “ticket sales pattern” is a single way for consumers to contribute their values, as it requires consumers to pay for the tickets only. As a consequence, once the consumers lost their interest in the projects, they will not pay for the tickets again and the parks’ incomes will be bound to fall.  Differently, the “flow value-added pattern” can deal with this problem. Under this pattern, children's amusement parks can take their own advantages of attracting children and parents. The park can be defined as “the flow of the entrance”, and the consumers can be defined as “high-valued flow”. Through regular discounts and the explosive spread of propaganda among the masses, a park can enlarge its visitor flow of the entrance. With high-quality service, good word of mouth and high trust ranking, parks can offer more services beyond the amusement park experiences. As a result, parents will not only pay for the ticket, but also buy more products and services. That is, consumers transform the “single purchase” into “multiple purchases”.

Except for the children's amusement zone, many parks are also fitted with child drawing activities, child photography, child education training, parent-child restaurants and so on. As a result, parks can combine several formats and promote each other to attract more players and maximize the benefits. Though the land-based children's amusement consumption has great potential, innovation is always necessary. As for practitioners, how to solve the homogenization of children's amusement brands and improve capacities to resist risks, meet users’ needs, and play to the score are the keys to remain in operation. Children's amusement parks should also focus on parenting needs, and consider how to innovate the formats of children's amusement parks via the combination of multi-formats. The industry can keep cooperation with several industries or even achieve cooperation with different fields such as IP and restaurants aiming at the requirements of child market segments. Also, the children’s business format can endeavor to integrate parent-children interaction and parents social life. All of these are worth trying.
※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No. 173 in March 2019