AT: John W.C. Robinson
DALLAS, Texas — Urban Air Adventure Park announced in January that it had a record-breaking year with 63 franchise agreements signed and three new parks opened in 2021. The company posted nearly $440 million in systemwide revenue, representing more than $2.8 million per park.
“We are extremely proud of how our dedicated franchisees and the brand have bounced back from the challenges of 2020 with a 2021 for the record books,” said Jay Thomas, CEO of Urban Air Adventure Park. “With the family entertainment industry on an upward trajectory, and now being a part of Unleashed Brands, the Urban Air team is excited to open even more parks in 2022 and make the brand a household name for every family.”
Thomas continued with thoughts on how Urban Air found success both during the pandemic and the era of recovery: “Speed and innovation are at the core of our overall brand strategy at Urban Air. Prior to our park closures in March 2020 due to COVID, we had a number of initiatives under development including a complete rebrand and a new marketing strategy. The launch of those strategies was delayed due to COVID, but were slowly implemented as we began to reopen.
“In January of 2021, we were able to launch the entirety of the new marketing strategy which amplified the visibility of our rebranding efforts. Additionally, while closed during COVID we realized the need to manage park occupancy. We quickly prioritized the expansion of our online membership platform and developed an internal ticketing and park reservation system.
“The reservation platform, coupled with a newly outlined health and safety procedure for our parks enabled many of our locations to get approval from local government agencies to safely open our parks in 2020 and position us to kick off 2021 strong. These factors were significant contributors to the many successes we experienced across the brand last year,” said Thomas.
Urban Air’s total number of open parks now stands at 153, and the recently secured franchise agreements bring the brand’s total number of locations in development to 112, dozens of which are expected to open in 2022.
“We are excited to see additional expansion in some of our west coast markets including California, Arizona and Colorado,” detailed Thomas. “There will be additional openings in the Midwest, northeast, east coast and Texas.”
The family entertainment center market continues to be the highest growth area in the attractions industry. Urban Air executives expect the demand for family entertainment services like that which Urban Air offers will continue to boom in the coming year as families look to resume a sense of normalcy and seek fun, enriching experiences for their kids to learn, play and grow.
Driving a significant portion of Urban Air’s 2021 success were nearly 225,000 birthday parties booked at the company’s properties, generating nearly $90 million, an all-time high for that revenue stream.
“While COVID has brought a number of challenges, the silver lining is the experience has reminded us the importance of in-person social interaction,” commented Thomas. “Parents want their kids to feel celebrated on the birthdays and being able to share that experience and create memories with friends and family is more important than ever before. Other than holidays, birthdays are special occasions throughout the year where families come together and connect. We see this by the number of adults that attend the birthday parties in addition to the kids.”
In July 2021, the team behind Urban Air announced the formation of Unleashed Brands, a new global growth-focused platform that aims to curate and expand a portfolio of brands to provide safe, fun and enriching environments that help kids learn, play and grow.
“As we build out our overall strategy for our portfolio and dig into the data for each brand, we are gathering tremendous insights about our customers,” explained Thomas. “These insights will enable us to create more meaningful experiences for our guests and better partner with the families that are part of our Unleashed Brands customer base. Urban Air, as with all of our brands, will benefit from the synergies generated by combining our industry leading kid-oriented brands into a unified mission to help kids learn, play and grow.”
The other brands under the Unleashed umbrella include Snapology, a franchise brand offering STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) programs for kids; The Little Gym, an enrichment and physical development center for children ages four months through 12; and the recently acquired Premier Martial Arts, a prominent franchised company that specializes in teaching karate, krav maga and kickboxing for children and adults.
“Our team has worked incredibly hard to create a solid infrastructure allowing Urban Air to scale at an incredible pace while driving average unit volume revenue and park attendance,” said Thomas. “It is due to the strength of this infrastructure, [CEO] Michael Browning realized we had a strong competitive advantage that could be leveraged by other kid focused brands. As we acquire a new brand, we have built out a framework for migrating each brand into the Unleashed Brands ecosystem. Each time a brand becomes fully integrated, the Unleashed Brands team is able to immerse the brand into the overall unified strategy.”
Ranked at No. 46 overall and No. 1 among entertainment franchises on Entrepreneur Magazine‘s 2022 Franchise 500 list, Urban Air continues to solidify itself as a leader in indoor family adventure park franchises in the United States.
“A critical aspect of our overall success is our team,” offered Thomas. “We have been fortunate in finding some of the best leaders in the industry who are passionate about the Unleashed Brands mission and vision.”
This article appears in the MARCH 2022 issue of Amusement Today.
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