Consumers today have a wide array of places at which they may enjoy their leisure time including retail centers, restaurants, nightclubs, museums, family entertainment centers, theaters, sport facilities, theme parks, themed attractions, themed entertainment, musems & science centers, among many others.
We have also seen a return to urban entertainment districts, historic districts, and the "great streets" of vibrant urban locations. To a varying extent, all these places compete with each other as alternative experiences for a consumer?s time and attention.
We refer to this place-based competitive marketplace for a consumer's "time at play" as the Destination Leisure Industry. This great convergence of consumer expectations has also been characterized as being a part of the overall "experience economy."
In general, today's consumer, from child to retiree, has experienced high quality live performances, movies, restaurants, and especially, theme parks. This is increasingly true even on a worldwide basis. Each person, each "end user" in this vast "theme park generation" is a sophisticated master of his or her own lifestyle and increasingly technology-savvy.
Despite such sophistication, we believe it is straightforward to figure out what consumers are after: During each person?s leisure time, enjoyment of their personal time with children, parents, extended family, spouse (or girlfriend/boyfriend), and friends and associates, is the whole point. We all want to seek or feel satisfaction with the quality of our relationships and the quality of our leisure-time experiences.
We're quite literally in the "shared" experience business, a part of the Experience Economy.
