fanman888

Just a heads up, I really think you're being overly optimistic with your 3 year estimate. These escape rooms are only good once per player. These escape rooms are also usually done in groups of 2-8 people. You'll eventually run out of new players/groups fairly quickly, much quicker than 3 years.

I know you're a small operation now, but fresh content in a timely manner is critical for escape rooms. For reference, the escape room in my city has 8 different sets/rooms and they're changing/adding new ones every 1-2 months. This keeps the regulars coming back and bringing friends or new customers. Might be worth looking into hiring more people to help run the current business while you design and build new rooms.

 

Edit:

Ok, so I did a bit more digging. I searched up the top 10 escape rooms in Spain and found that 8 of them have only one or two rooms while the other 2 had three or more rooms. The top rated ER was the one with 4 rooms and the 2nd best rated was the ER with 3 rooms.

 

My suggestions:

 

-Based on more research, 3 rooms seems like the sweet spot, but if you want to be the best 4 would be idea. However, with puzzles, variety is key; always try to strive for more. Additionally, have a schedule for introducing new rooms (ie. every 2 months the new room is unveiled and have a countdown timer) and build hype through teasers such as posting a picture of a piece of prop or something to give customers a glimpse of the new room.

 

-If you can't increase in quantity and selection, then focus on quality. Have some novel scenarios that tie in with Spanish culture, media, etc. It will enrich the experience for tourists. As I was searching through your competitors, a lot of them were pretty generic ER ideas like "nuclear meltdown" or "time traveler" themes but there was one that was mafia related and had a kidnapping involved which would be nice for people to learn a little about the Spanish mafia.

 

-Keep the blueprints and props of all your past builds. Allow customers to individually submit reviews for each of your rooms and track the performance of all your ER. You can reintroduce your best performers with some changes, which would appeal to both new and past customers. This will also help when you are behind schedule or too busy building or thinking of new rooms, saves you from having to design something from the ground up.

 

-Try to accept as many forms of payment as possible (other currencies, all major credit cards including AMEX, paypal, crypto, etc). Might save some tourist a trip to the ATM, I know I've had instances where I ran out of local currencies and either sucked it up and paid the extra ATM fees or held off doing stuff until I found a bank.

 

Can't think of anymore right now but I'll update this post if I think of more. Hope these help!

Just wanted to say that your comment was very informative and provided very detailed constructive criticism.

Also Canadian, and my mom left me in China for two years. Looking back, if I didn't go back I probably would have forgotten about my culture and native language. So in a way, I'm thankful but at the same time, I lost a lot of friends and relearning English took awhile.

I think everyday thoughts in English, but some specific things like the multiplication table i recall in Chinese.

My mom ended up explaining into further detail when I was older. She had just divorced from my dad (pretty nasty divorce) and we had just immigrated to Canada. My mom hardly spoke any English and her university degree from China was useless. She couldn't support both her and I, so she had to send me back to China while she got rooted. I don't blame her for any of it, even though it was kind of traumatic waking up in the morning and discovering your mom had left early in the morning.