Why did Hong Kong Disneyland lose money for six consecutive years?

The competition pattern has been obvious, and the "internal friction" of Hollywood's three major theme parks is about to start.

Why did Hong Kong Disneyland lose money for six consecutive years?

The competition pattern has been obvious, and the "internal friction" of Hollywood's three major theme parks is about to start.

Text/July

There's another loss.

Recently, Hong Kong Disneyland released its annual financial report for 2020, with annual revenue of only about 654.38+0.4 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 654.38+0.65 billion RMB) and annual net loss of 2.66 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 2.205 billion RMB). Such a huge loss is not only the sixth consecutive year of loss for Hong Kong Disneyland, but also the biggest annual loss since the official opening of Hong Kong Disneyland.

Specifically, the biggest reason for the poor performance of Hong Kong Disneyland last year was that the sudden epidemic brought great impact. Hong Kong Disneyland has been closed for many times. About 60% of the time in a year is closed, and hotels in the park can only maintain limited services.

However, the epidemic situation is not the only factor that Hong Kong Disneyland continues to lose money. After all, since the opening of Shanghai Disneyland on 20 16, many mainland tourists in Hong Kong Disneyland have been diverted. The loss problem from 20 15 has been persistent, and the development is not optimistic.

Therefore, for Hong Kong Disneyland, which has been losing money continuously, regardless of the impact of the epidemic itself, the next development pressure is not small. In addition, domestic competitors of Hong Kong Disneyland will soon own Beijing Globe on the basis of Shanghai Disneyland, and overseas tourists will also be diverted from other theme parks in East Asia.

In addition, from the perspective of domestic theme parks including Hong Kong Disneyland, the consumer groups at this stage are mainly post-80s and post-90s, and the consumption awareness of the incremental groups after 00 has not been cultivated. In this context, Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland and Beijing Universal will soon form a "three-country" competition pattern, which will only accelerate the emergence of "internal friction".

1

-Densely distributed Asian theme parks-

The advantages of Hong Kong Disneyland are gone.

According to the 2020 financial report recently disclosed by Hong Kong Disneyland, the annual revenue of Hong Kong Disneyland last year was only HK$ 654.38+04 billion, down 76% year-on-year, and the annual net loss reached HK$ 2.66 billion. In terms of passenger flow, the number of receptionists decreased by 73% year-on-year to only 1.7 million, and the hotel occupancy rate was 15%, down by 59% year-on-year.

For such a bleak business situation last year, Hong Kong Disneyland said that it was mainly caused by the epidemic, and the global tourism industry was facing "unprecedented uncertainty and numerous challenges". Among them, Hong Kong Disneyland experienced three temporary closures, with a total closure time of 2 17 days, and only 40% of the time was open to the public throughout the year; Hotels in the park can only maintain limited operations.

The problem is that last year's performance was actually the sixth consecutive year that Hong Kong Disneyland "saw red", setting the highest loss record since the opening of the park. Even if we put aside the impact of the epidemic, it is hard to say that Hong Kong Disneyland will definitely turn a profit.

After all, there are many theme parks in East Asia, especially Hollywood theme parks. Take Disneyland as an example. Apart from Hong Kong Disneyland, there are Tokyo Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland. Take Universal Studios as an example. In addition to the upcoming Beijing Universal, there are Singapore Universal and Osaka Universal.

From the specific geographical location, the distance between Hong Kong Disneyland and these competitors is not far, and the areas covered by consumer groups also overlap greatly. In such a competitive encirclement, as the smallest Disneyland in the world, Hong Kong Disneyland no longer has an absolute competitive advantage.

In fact, the overall visitors of Hong Kong Disneyland mainly come from the mainland and overseas. For example, 20 19, the proportion of non-local visitors reached 59%. However, in the process of reopening the park last year, many activities launched by Hong Kong Disneyland did attract local tourists effectively, but it was still difficult to make up for the loss caused by the decrease of non-local tourists.

Shanghai Disneyland, in particular, has been giving Hong Kong Disneyland a big impact. 20 15 Shanghai Disneyland officially opened on 20 16 after Hong Kong Disneyland began to lose money. Mainland visitors to Hong Kong decreased by 6.7% in that year, while the number of visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland further decreased to 6 10/00000, and the net loss further increased to17100000, which did not improve after that.

Obviously, for Hong Kong Disneyland, which had suffered losses for many years before the outbreak of the epidemic, the epidemic was not the only factor that led to its sustained losses, mainly because of the fierce competition among many theme parks in the same region.

2

The "internal friction" of theme parks is coming soon-

Competition of the same consumer group.

After all, theme parks in the south often achieve the "long tail effect" of attracting tourists because of the favorable urban climate. However, for Beijing Universal, although the competitive environment in the northern region is relatively relaxed, the impact of a large number of indoor projects and climate on the number of visitors needs to be re-estimated.

On the other hand, Universal Beijing has a completely different competitive advantage from Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland: Unlike Disneyland, which usually has a higher proportion of young women and children, Universal Studios is more likely to attract young male consumers. For example, Singapore Universal's science fiction city theme area can attract many Transformers fans.

However, at present, Beijing Universal cannot avoid the above problems encountered by Hong Kong Disneyland, that is, there is obvious regional overlap with other Hollywood theme parks in Asia. Then, the opening of Beijing Universal will still divert these Hollywood theme parks, among which Hong Kong Disneyland, which has suffered losses for many years in a row, will face greater pressure.

In addition, from the perspective of many domestic theme parks, whether it is a relatively mature "western" theme park or a local theme park, the number of tourists is mainly "transported" by the number of local tourists, and it is not a simple cultural tourism project that can achieve drainage in turn. The target audiences of these theme parks are close, and they are basically competing for young users and family users aged 15-35.

From this point of view, after the opening of Beijing Universal Park, it will form a competition pattern of "three kingdoms stand in the balance" with Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland, and then form "internal friction" within the same competition scope.

three

—the post-00 consumer groups that are difficult to overcome in the short term—

The incremental road is "promising".

In fact, for theme parks such as Disney and Universal Studios, the biggest advantage of being able to successfully lay out the global market and be among the TOP3 of the global theme park group is that its own IP foundation can attract many consumers to pay for it.

Whether it's Disney's Princess series, Marvel superhero series, Universal Harry Potter series, Transformers series and so on. The IP behind Disneyland and Universal Studios is obviously competitive in quantity, coverage and settling time. In addition, these IPS are very mature in film and television and have accumulated a lot of popularity. Online and offline traffic exchange has further stabilized the consumer groups in their theme parks.

However, from the consumer groups of Disneyland and Universal Studios, IP is a sharp weapon for these theme parks to "dominate" the world, and it has also become a "hurdle" for the expansion of domestic consumer groups.

In the domestic theme park market, with the expansion of the middle class and the enhancement of cultural consumption consciousness, the consumption growth of cultural tourism is more obvious. This is actually supported by the fact that the 80s and 90s have become one of the main consumer groups of these theme parks. After all, China's post-80s and post-90s groups grew up with a series of IPS such as Japanese anime and Hollywood movies, and on this basis, they cultivated a good awareness of IP consumption.

However, for the future development of theme parks, we can't simply rely on the consumer groups who are mainly born in the 1980s and 1990s. The post-80s and 90s are getting older and older, so it is not absolutely certain that they can continue to "transport" effective ammunition with absolute advantages for theme parks. From this point of view, 00 has become the "increment" that theme parks must win next.

Of course, not only Beijing Universal, Shanghai Disneyland and Hongkong Disneyland need to think about the issue of incremental development, but also other theme parks in China can't avoid this challenge, and the task of "conquering" cultural tourism consumption in the future is not easy.

Last week, Hong Kong Disneyland announced its 2020 results, showing that its annual revenue was HK$ 654.38+04 billion, a sharp drop of 76% year-on-year. And the net profit loss was HK$ 2.7 billion, the worst result since the opening of the park.

The increase in losses in the last two years was mainly due to the substantial decrease in mainland tourists, which led to a continuous decline in performance. Due to the "riots" and the epidemic, the number of mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong has been greatly reduced, and Disneyland, which basically relies on mainland tourists, has suffered huge natural losses. It is far from enough to rely solely on local tourists to support Disney's operating costs.

Even though Hong Kong Disneyland has continuously launched new activities in the past two years, it still fails to solve the problem of tourists. Mainland tourists coming to Hong Kong need to be quarantined for 14 days, which naturally isolates most tourists. Shanghai and Disney. If mainland tourists really like Disney, they can move to Shanghai instead of going to Hong Kong Disneyland.

Therefore, whether Hong Kong Disneyland has a chance of recovery in the future depends on the "face of the epidemic". If the quarantine period is still so long, it will be difficult for Hong Kong Disneyland to solve the problem of tourists, and it will end up losing money.

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