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Editor's corner

It's hard to believe that we're celebrating our Silver Anniversary this month - 25 years in the location-based entertainment and leisure industry. It was back in January 1989 when a bowling alley owned by one of our real estate consultancy's clients burned to the ground and we were asked to manage its redesign, expansion and rebuilding. We also became involved in transforming its corporate culture and levels of guest services. To make a long story short, when the center reopened 10 months later (it was a fast-track project), the revenues doubled with premium prices and greatly enhanced food and beverage and game room per capita sales. We learned a lot of lessons from working on that project including not getting caught up in industry paradigms and matching the product and experience to a socio-economic target market, including its food and beverage and interior design. We have applied this philosophy to every project since. That project became a benchmark for the bowling industry at the time. Much of what we introduced in the project was later adopted by many bowling centers. You can read the longer version of the story on our website.

My partner and I at the time decided it had been a much more interesting and rewarding project than trying to help our real estate clients fix their distressed commercial real estate, so we moved 100% into the location-based entertainment industry. That was the time when the indoor family entertainment center was really getting off the ground, so the timing was perfect for entering the industry and we never looked back.

The December holiday season is often a time to clean out the old, meaning sort and clean out a year's accumulation of stuff in your office. Amy Nichols, our interior designer, took clean out the old, in with the new very seriously over the holidays and did some serious cleaning out of old out-of-date samples and unneeded drawings. She filled an entire trash dumpster. We're being kind to Amy and not kidding her about being the interior dumpster designer.

In the coming months I will be presenting at a number of conferences:

• Makin' Hey in the Heartland, North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association (NAFDMA), March 4, Kansas City, Value-Added in Today's Economy: It's All About the EXPERIENCE
• Foundations Entertainment University, February 25-27, Phoenix
• MAIZE Corn Party, February 28; Atlanta; More Value, More Guests, More Revenue
• Dubai Entertainment Amusement & Leisure Show (DEAL), April 7-8, Dubai, Two-day Foundations Entertainment University.

By the way, if you enjoy the articles in our Leisure eNewsletters, you should also enjoy my blogs. This year I plan to increase their frequency to every week or two weeks. They won't clutter up you in-box, as you get a short email with the title of the blog and a short snippet. If you want to read the entire blog, you just hit the hyperlink in the email. In the past month I have posted blogs on:

• American's optimistic on spending for entertainment and restaurants
• How interactive location-based entertainment can bond families
• Movie attendance continued its long-term decline in 2013
• American's favorite leisure activities

To sign-up to get blog email notices, just click here and then enter you email address. And if you want to check out past ones, just click here.

The other thing I do almost daily is post relevant interesting news and articles to Twitter and LinkedIn you won't find in other industry publications. On Twitter, you can follow me at Whitehutchinson and on LinkedIn at Randy White. Check out some of my past posts and then decide if you think it will be worth following. Some of the more recent ones with links to articles included:

• Young wealthy consumers crave experiences, not products
• Forest on First, a farm-to-table play café, to open in Los Altos, CA
• The secret of delighting customers? Put employees first
• The 6 laws of customer experience
• Go-kart racing in Belgium is terrifying
• Disney's giant turkey legs are an unexpected Instagram hit - 2 million sold in 2013

By the way, although I have a Facebook account so I can access other Facebook accounts, I don't post to it or use it; there's just not enough time in the day for all the social media.

I hope you enjoy our rather diverse collection of articles this month covering many facets of developing and operating location-based entertainment/leisure projects.

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