Big Data, by following every phone

For the past few months, we’ve been working with a big data mining and research company in China to obtain visitor characteristics at attractions in the country.

What we discovered blew our minds.

With the help of mobile phone location services data, GPS, and wifi tracking, we were able to track the movement of 95% of all cell phone and mobile devices around the country, precise down to the exact building, and the exact hour during which the building was visited.

With statistical extrapolation from the range of installed apps and self-reported settings on the mobile device, we were also able to obtain demographic and socioeconomic data, including information on gender, income levels, occupation, and automobile ownership, just to name a few.

It’s not only the level of detail that were surprising.  What the data actually revealed, was more surprising that we would have expected.

Without any further ado, here are a summary of the results for Shanghai Disney Resort and Chimelong Ocean Kingdom.

• Initially, the most surprising result was that attendance figures are not very surprising, at least compared to their stated targets and as estimated by third party sources.  According to our data, Shanghai Disney hosts 10+ million annual visitors, while Chimelong Ocean Kingdom hosts more than 8 million.

• In both parks, the majority of parkgoers (although by a slim margin) are female.  This echoes trends in other mega parks in the region; Tokyo Disney’s visitorship has been over 70% female for decades now.  While Shanghai Disney and Chimelong are not yet at those levels, it seems probable they could veer in that direction.

• Visitor origins to the park are well-distributed.  Neighboring regions account for less than 50% of visitors, meaning that nearly half of visitors are likely overnight tourists.  This phenomenon can be interpreted in various ways; perhaps the lack of world-class theme parks in China means that there is an overwhelming flow of overnight visitors over residents to these attractions.  This is contrary to the long-held understanding that theme parks in metropolitan areas derive a significant majority of their visitors from the local resident market.

• Perhaps most unexpectedly, the highest seasonality is not necessarily during the Golden Week holidays.  Shanghai Disney records no less than four major peaks during the year, while Chimelong Ocean Kingdom has a single large spike.  These data undercut the typical understanding that the Golden Week holidays are the busiest for parks in China.

• Peaking is also surprising.  At regional and local theme parks in China, we often see design day ratios during Golden Week approaching nearly 2% (as expressed in average daily peak attendance to annual attendance).  However, at both Shanghai Disney and Chimelong, the design day ratios are well under the standard 0.7-0.8% used in planning most parks, and are instead remarkably well-distributed throughout the year.  We interpret this as a sign that both parks are quite operationally efficient, and able to distribute attendance via price elasticity of tickets and other marketing schemes.

We hope this dispels some misconceptions about Chinese parks, and adds some clarity to the understanding we have about the state of theme parks in the Middle Kingdom.

This article was written by the Park Database, a respected source for entertainment and theme park information.  You can see the full article here

http://www.theparkdb.com/blog/the-mega-chinese-theme-parks/