How to choose a theme for escape room? Part 2
(time of reading 4 min)

Opening an escape room is a good business decision, but the real success comes only once you have several rooms operational at one location. In many situations first room usually covers the bills, while the second and all the next ones really builds up the return of investment, profit and capital necessary to expand further.

It's not a complete must to open with more than 1 game from the very start, but more escape room should be at least planning since the first one opens.

One of the multiple tasks, coming with necessity to open the second game, is choice of theme, which will compliment your first one in most successful way. Of course, you can always just pick a theme YOU like most and roll with it (staying passionate about your escape room is always a huge advantage). But unless you feel specific urge for specific theme - there are 2 main approaches to shape the package of several themes for your location.

This one is pretty simple - go as wide as possible. Choose themes, which have as little in common as possible. Make sure every player will have at least one he/she will be interested in. If you have 2 escape rooms and both are horror-themed - you are going to cut off the significant amount of potential audience. Kids, families, people who hate everything scary - they will be completely negative on giving your new entertainment a try.

If you are on a small market, where people don't necessarily know about escape rooms, it will hurt to lose a potential customer just because both of your games themes are "hard pass" for them.

On the other hand - imagine a situation, when you have a horror-themed game and a kid-friendly one: almost every person will be ok will playing at least one. And once people tasted what escape rooms are - it will be much easier to convince them play another one, even if the theme is not so appealing to a certain person.

If you are entering the competitive market, where most of the generic and popular themes are covered (sometimes with multiple escape room companies), it's usually a smart move to choose one theme direction and narrow down to it.

If you have 3 completely different themes - that's 3 three completely different themes and nothing more. But if you have 3 horrors or 3 kid-friendly games - you can be perceived as an expert in this area, showing the potential players that you are really into this theme.

This limits and available customer pool, but helps build stronger and more loyal customer base. At big market even one segment of audience is big enough, while your average cost-of-attraction per customer will be much lower, as you usually need to spend on ads to bring the person first time and can attract to second and third game simply during the post-game chatter.

Plan carefully and choose your themes wisely. Not sure about perfect combination for your market? Ask us, we are always open to help soon-to-be escape room owners.