We measure visitors’ experiences using a set of metrics combined into two dimensions: immersion and participation. We base our study on the escape room visitors’ online survey followed by structural equation modeling (SEM) including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the collected data. Our study aims to assess the impact of escape room experiences on visitors’ satisfaction and loyalty intentions. Thus, new experience design strategies with a focus both on stimulating return visits and on attracting new visitors are becoming a critical challenge for escape room providers. However, the escape room market has slowed down due to the overflow of the market with standard escape rooms that fail to create unique visitors’ experiences. Real-life escape rooms are relatively new entertainment facilities that quickly turned into popular tourist attractions. Thus, this contribution seeks to feed into an emerging and increasingly relevant debate that has been little addressed in tourism geography: linking experiences, creative economies, authenticity and cultural heritage, etc.-through escape rooms. Indeed, the connection between escape room narratives and the local culture has been shown to be weak in a majority of cases. A significant contrast exists between business-owners and countries, however, as to the role given to foreign customers and the opportunities that all the above implies. Escape roomer-tourists have even been detected: people who essentially plan their trips with the sole intention of playing these games. Tourism plays a significant role in the escape room industry: approximately one of every three customers is a tourist. This paper examines such phenomena using an empirical methodology based on a geographic analysis of business repositories and a global survey. The extraordinary global impact of escape rooms, their implications for tourism, and the limited literature provide grounds for this research. There has been a spectacular growth in the escape game sector over the past decade. High-tech escape room providers need to maintain high expenditures for technical support and staff training in order to build a sustainable positive visitors’ experience. These results suggest that high-tech escape rooms could become more attractive tourist attractions only if their owners can invest substantial funds in maintaining the technical level and staff training. At the same time, technical failures and bugs can reduce visitors’ satisfaction. The results show that technologically sophisticated escape rooms create a more authentic tourist experience with a deeper immersion in the escape room theme. The empirical part of the study includes a semi-structured interview with the company’s co-founder and an analysis of 746 visitors’ reviews posted on TripAdvisor. The present study is based on the evidence from Claustrophobia, one of the leading European technologically advanced escape room providers. One of the new strategies assumes the active use of new technologies, including special effects and virtual reality technologies opting. Growing competition stimulates the escape room providers to search for new experience design strategies. Over the last five years, real-life escape rooms have become popular tourist attractions in many European cities. This paper aims to assess the impact of new technologies on escape room visitors’ experience based on the analysis of online reviews.
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