Back in September I posted my blog Proof that moving to a High Fidelity customer experience is a winning strategy. In that blog I discussed the counterintuitive success AMC Theaters was having in reducing their movie theater seating capacity to improve the seating comfort, as well as the improvements they made to both the projection and sound quality and to their food and beverage offerings.
I believe this past weekend’s success of the movie Gravity is additional proof in the movie theater industry that High Fidelity is the formula for success. Yes, Gravity was a great movie with great actors and a great storyline, i.e., the performance was top rate. You need that for success. But what was most amazing about its opening weekend of a $55.6million box office, a record for movies released in October, was that moviegoers paid an extra $3 to $4 dollars to see it in a High Fidelity presentation, in 3-D. 3-D accounted for 80% of domestic ticket sales. And one-quarter of those customers paid an even higher premium price to see the super High Fidelity 3-D IMAX version, which accounted for 20% of sales.
This was a winning combination, a great performance in a High Fidelity presentation.
What this says as an analogy for other types of location-based entertainment (LBE) is that people will flock to a great performance when it is presented in High Fidelity and they will happily pay a premium price for that experience. When it comes to LBEs such as theme parks, family entertainment centers, bowling, laser tag and other similar venues, the performance is the entertainment attractions and the High Fidelity includes not only the presentation of the attractions, but also the setting it is in (it’s ambiance and comfort), the food and beverage and how the guests are treated – everything that shapes the total guest experience. Offer that up and you have a winning combination.
About Randy White
Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.
Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.
Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.
Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.
