ESCAPING COVID-19 UPDATE – IMPACT TO ESCAPE ROOM INDUSTRY

It has now been over six months since the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province and almost three months since our initial article, Escaping COVID-19.  To many it seems like it has been several years.  We continue to adjust and try to figure out a path forward to get back to the “new normal” while trying to minimize the risk of increasing the transmission of COVID-19.  Most if not all of us have heard the saying “we are all in this together” exemplifying how this pandemic is simultaneously affecting the entire globe.

Two crises resulted from COVID-19, a health crisis and an economic crisis.  As of June 12^th, more than 7.7 million cases around the world have been confirmed with more than 2 million in the US [1].  As you have undoubtedly seen, countries are in various stages from when the disease first appeared to when each nation gets the transmission rate under control and the number of confirmed cases noticeably tails off. We will cover some countries later in this article.

IMPACT TO JOBS

According to countryecomony.com, the US unemployment rate was 13.3% (May) which has significantly increased, up 9.7% from 2019.  Canada has also seen a significant impact – the unemployment rate was 13.7%, up 8.3% from 2019. 

Impact to European states seemed to be much less (+/- percentage comparison to 2019):

• Spain – 14.8% (April), +0.6%
• Greece – 14.4% (March), -3.7%
• Latvia – 9.0% (April), +2.7%
• France – 8.7% (April), +0.2%
• Lithuania – 8.6% (April), +2.6%
• Sweden – 7.9% (April), +1.5%
• Euro zone – 7.3% (April), -0.3%
• Italy – 6.3% (April), -3.8%
• Switzerland – 4.4% (March), -0.2%
• UK – 3.9% (March), +0.1%
• Germany – 3.5% (April), +0.3%

Other countries whose unemployment rate were impacted include (+/- percentage comparison to 2019):

• South Africa – 29.1% (December), +2.0%
• Uruguay – 10.5% (February), +2.1%
• Australia – 6.2% (April), +1.0%
• Russia – 5.8% (April), +1.1%

IMPACT TO THE ESCAPE ROOM INDUSTRY

Impact to small businesses was significant.  The most vulnerable industries are accommodations and food services, arts, entertainment, and recreation [2].  While small businesses are a recognized proving ground for entrepreneurs, a vibrant source of innovation and competition, and an essential source of employment, they are typically not geared to withstand this magnitude of an economic storm.

The Escape Room industry was no exception to facing this vulnerability.  Some have or are waiting out the virus / removal of restrictions, some have adapted, and some are taking advantage of the down time to create new rooms, expand and/or move to new locations.  Several are selling vouchers that can be redeemed later.  Some owners have questioned whether normal levels of business will return prior to early 2021.  Sadly, not every escape room owner was able to wait it out or is struggling (such as Escape My Reality in Stroudsburg PA), but hopefully they have found a way to get back on their feet.

One difficulty that many businesses faced (or are still facing) is the lack of communication from their local governments.  This is not a criticism but more acknowledgement of the difficultly of a situation we have not faced before (at least to this magnitude).  Businesses in the entertainment/leisure tend to be viewed as lower priority for reopening, so communication being provided by local governments is often ambiguous to these venues.  That makes it challenging to plan in terms of budgeting and being able to retain employees.

ONLINE ESCAPE ROOMS

On a brighter note, one noticeable area of expansion for the industry is in the development of online escape rooms.  We featured several posts in our Escape Room News, Reviews, and Articles of Interest – May 2020 post featuring online rooms and apps.  Over the past few months, escape rooms have been expanded to online games.  This expands their audience from local residents and visitors to anyone with an internet connection (> 4.5 billion). 

One featured post illustrates how creative escape room owners can be.  Rob Faiella, who owns Rock Avenue Escape Room in New Port Richey Florida, was laid off from his job as a computer programmer and was forced to shut the doors to his escape room business. But none of those two restrictions stopped him from keeping money flowing in as he took his escape room game online. A family of four can play for about $50, where Faiella guides them as the mayor of a small town using two iPhones strapped onto him.

We are compiling a catalog of online and download escape games from ER businesses.  If your game is not listed, give us a shout with your details!

BOARD GAMES AND APPS

It only makes sense that being confined in our homes might lead to playing more board games, including escape games.  This weekend Dawn, Ace, Amy, and I played Exit: The Haunted Roller Coaster.  We played another Exit game, The Secret Lab several months ago and really enjoyed it.  This one did not disappoint as well.  With us being in two separate states, we purchased two copies so each location could view and follow the progress.  We set up a video connection using FB messenger.

There are many board games, apps, puzzles, etc.  There are several cool VR apps (Oculus, STEAM, etc.) to entertain.  We are compiling a catalog of games.  NOTE: One thing I recently learned is VR escape games are typically limited to specific hardware (high-end, mid-range, low end).

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES?

If you recall from the last COVID-19 article, I said it wouldn’t surprise me if some started offering a virtual escape room that we could play at home using a home Virtual Reality (VR) system.  I’d love a setup where Dawn, Ace, Amy, and I could each have a VR headset (such as the Oculus Go) and play on online VR escape room.  I see both online and room VR as potential industry expanding capabilities.  Most owners may not have the skills to create their own VR room and hiring someone to create it could be cost-prohibitive specially during these times.  However, the market for this could be huge!

VR appears to be exploding these days.  Oculus hardware such as the Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Samsung Gear VR have been in high demand.  Oculus made $297 million in non-advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2020 [3].  The HTC VIVE Cosmos appears to be more readily available and will be interesting to see how it’s availability is affected in the next few months.

Do I dare mention this thought (purists, cover your ears! 😄)? If you are considering a VR room at your business, could that space and VR hardware be able to plug and play with other types of VR games (VR shooter)? Think about how that could expand your audience and business potential!

REOPENING ESCAPE ROOMS

As countries/states get into the latter stages of the virus (or at least past the peak) they are cautiously returning to normal or the “new normal”.  More precautions with safely protecting staff and customers will be essential and, in many cases, required.  Local governments are providing restrictions and guidelines, monitoring data, and slowly updating/removing these restrictions.  You’ve likely heard your government officials state that the brakes will be applied if the number of cases start to spike again.  Restrictions will likely be in place until one or more vaccines have been developed, tested, and approved.

In this article, I will cover several countries and expand on the US in a future article. As a person who is interested in the data, I have been tracking confirmed cases for several countries and US states.  I use the Hill equation/curve that I introduced in the previous COVID-19 article.  Here is example chart from the last article where I identify four stages:

Stage 1 is the early stages where transmission rate is increasing or sufficiently high such that the number of confirmed cases increases by day.  Stage 2 case counts reach and pass the inflection point where the number of additional cases per day has peaked and then begins to decrease.  Stage 3 represent the turning point where transmission rate and number of new daily cases has been significantly reduced. Stage 4 is the complete tail-off of new daily cases.

The uncertainty in the number of predicted cases is very high at Stage 1 and remains significant until the bending of the curve occurs at Stage 3.  The intent has been to keep the slope of the curve as flat as possible to not overtax our medical infrastructure. 

Let’s look at several countries for a COVID-19 update and business reopening.