Escape rooms are now in almost every part of the world with a sizable population that has disposable income to spend. They’re fantastic for creating opportunities for authentic interactions, teamwork and problem solving with friends, family and colleagues. However as every escape room owner knows, there is a very clear limit to how much revenue you can extract from the local population, unless you happen to be situated in a location with heavy tourist activity. Eventually your customer will have played every game you have. With the costs for creating a quality experience going up, it becomes a juggling act between the cost to create the experience and the expected return on that investment.
Following closely behind the growth of the escape rooms in fixed locations have been a diverse mix of portable variants. Boxes with locks, modified suitcases and pop-up tents are some of the options available to companies interested in an experience similar to the traditional escape room, but without needing to leave the office. While the potential for immersion is a lot lower, there are a lot of benefits for both current escape room owners, aspiring ones and team building facilitators to add a portable escape room to their offerings.
#1 - You Can Go to Your Customer
Corporate customers are great for an escape room as they often guarantee a number of full groups in one big wave usually on the same day. However the challenge is often, from both sides, guaranteeing the availability of your escape room and the employees at the same time. With a mobile escape room, it’s far more easier to coordinate a time that works for both parties. With multiple sets of the mobile escape room, your flexibility for accommodating multiple groups of customers goes far higher than with a regular escape room.
#2 - Startup Costs are Much Lower
Opening an escape room can be very capital intensive, especially if the location you’ve secured requires a lot of work done, either to satisfy local code or simply so you can build the experiences how you want them to be. For a single game of anywhere from 400-800 sq ft, depending on the level of theming, digital content and engineering required, you could spend easily $40,000 to $100,000 USD. While there isn’t an extensive list of mobile escape rooms available to purchase, they range anywhere from $500 - $3,000 USD for a single game.
#3 - Companies Always Want Teambuilding
Companies globally engage in team building regularly—scavenger hunts, go-kart racing and axe throwing are just a few of the many options available. Escape rooms in particular are fast becoming popular for small, medium and large corporations across the board. They offer an appealing package of teamwork, fun and small investment in terms of time that other activities don’t necessarily offer. For a business owner looking to offer escape room experiences in addition to their operating escape room, a mobile solutions means another experience you can offer to your customers.
#4 - Operating Costs Are a Lot Lower
Every city and region is different so we won’t go into the details on specific numbers, but we can pretty easily see that running a traditional escape room at a fixed location incurs far more costs on an ongoing basis than a mobile escape room. Some immediate areas where you spend more are on:
Employees on the clock but not having active groups playing.
General maintenance of your facility, both in and outside of the rooms.
Rent!
You get the idea. That’s not to say having a mobile experience has to exist separately from a typical escape room, but the revenue potential and speed of your return on investment for a mobile escape room is much higher.
#5 - Create More Value From Your Escape Room Customers
Escape rooms are a viable business if you’re able to offer the mix of a quality experience, secure an optimal enough location and manage your operations efficiently. Not everyone can do this and as a result the growth of total escape rooms globally has leveled off once the novelty has worn off in certain markets. However a problem each escape room will face is that each customer you bring in can only generate you more revenue based on the number of separate games you have. Once they’ve played through them all, you either never make money from them again or need to refresh your rooms.
With a mobile escape room you can reach out to them after they’ve played, and pitch them on bringing an entirely new experience to them at their workplace. Considering that escape room customers are not necessarily the general public, you may end up capturing more customers than you previously had access to.
With our track record designing for some of the world’s biggest companies, our team here at Immersive Tech have put together a high tech, self-running (manual setup required!) mobile escape room game to offer a cost effective tool for current and aspiring escape room owners.
You can read a fantastic review by the RoomEscapeArtist team here.
Check out Aliens Are Attacking at the AllPlay website.
