Theme parks enjoy a fantasy ride in growth

The theme park business in China saw its biggest event of the year on June 16 when the $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort opened.

It is Disney's sixth park worldwide and the largest in Asia, and aims to attract local and foreign tourists with exotic experiences and Chinese elements.

Tens of thousands streamed into Shanghai Disney on its opening day, an event that almost two decades in the making. The resort is the largest foreign investment for the Californian company, as it intensifies the race to dominate China's $610 billion tourism industry.

Shi Mi has been to every Disney theme park. With the latest opening in his native Shanghai, he was not going to miss opening day. "There's a certain romance to it for me," says the 19-year-old student, who managed to get a ticket from a friend working at a travel agency. The tickets that went on general sale in March online were snapped up within minutes.

Leia Mi, the concept designer for the Shanghai Disney castle, says the company conducted thorough market research into Chinese preferences. For example, while other Disney parks showcase a castle that guests walk through, the Shanghai castle was designed with eating and retail space inside to meet Chinese expectations.

The park "plants a stake deeper into the world's largest market" for The Walt Disney Co, according to chief executive Robert Iger.

"The experience people have when they spend time in our theme parks is immersive," he says. "They not only hear and see our stories, but also they actually enter them, live in them."

The CEO, who has visited Shanghai 35 times, adds that the project is the company's greatest opportunity since Walt Disney bought land in Florida in the 1960s to build the theme park there.

Disney attractions top the global rankings for theme parks, with an attendance of 137 million last year, followed by Merlin Entertainments with 62 million and Universal Studios with 44 million.

According to the 2015 TEA/AECOM theme park attendance report, the Chinese mainland market almost entirely drove the 6.9 percent rise in attendance in the Asia-Pacific region last year. The primary reason was that many parks have recently completed their first full year of operations. These included Chiseling Ocean Kingdom, which reached No 4 on the chart with 7.5 million visits.

The report adds that once Shanghai Disney Resort completes a full year in operation, clarity would emerge on the likely time frame for the Asian parks market to overtake North America. It also forecast there will be shifting ownership and consolidation of smaller parks into larger chains as part of the evolving and maturing trend in Asia.

Universal Studios Beijing is under construction and other international players are actively looking around in China. Operators, local governments and intellectual property companies are all interested in building branded attractions in China, the largest consumer market in the world, the report says.

wangzhuoqiong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 06/24/2016 page27)