Hefei Wanda Cultural Tourism City has opened!  Located 500 kilometers to the west of Shanghai Disneyland and costing RMB$35 billion to build, Hefei Wanda City integrates a theme park, theater, shopping center and hotels.  The launch of the tourism city marks the start of the newest leisure business battle between Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and Chairman of Wanda Group, and Disney.  According to Wang Jianlin, the Group will develop 15 Wanda City projects across China by the end of 2020 and is committed to spearheading the leisure industry of China.  Will this ambitious dream come true?

The Theme Entertainment Association (TEA), an authoritative research institution for the global theme park industry, and the US-based AECOM Group have jointly issued the “2015 global theme park survey report”.  The report pointed out that the top 10 global theme park groups received 420 million visitors in 2015, up 7.2% from a year ago.  In particular, the Asia market delivered a striking performance in 2015, accounting for half of the global theme park market share.  AECOM estimated that China will see 59 new theme parks go into operation by 2020 and the amusement park attendance will reach 220 million, a scale that can compare with the global leader--the US market.  On such a basis, it seems that for Wanda Group, the conditions have been met and achieving the aforementioned “small goal” will happen naturally.

Also, looking at the top 25 global theme parks in 2015 in terms of attendance, 12 of them are situated in the Asia-Pacific region and centered in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong.  The theme park industry in the Asia-Pacific region experienced a 6.9% increase in attendance in 2015 compared with 2014, which was mainly fueled by the rapid development of theme parks in China.  Now the world’s well-known theme parks have made inroads into China including Disney, Universal Studios, Six Flags, Hello Kitty and Merlin.  This not only has provided Chinese consumers with unique economic and cultural content, but has also stirred the culture, leisure and tourism market of China.  Meanwhile, the local Chinese brands such as the Wanda Group, OCT Parks China, Haichang Holdings and Chimelong are aggressively making deployment and expansion to compete in this enormous market that integrates culture, leisure, entertainment and real estate.  The booming theme park industry in China has also driven the game (amusement) industry to develop toward new directions and bring new business opportunities.

※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No. 147 in October, 2016