UAE world’s fastest-growing theme park market
DUBAI, March 11, 2017
The UAE is the dominant market in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), the fastest growing region for theme park visitor spending in the world, said a report by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.
UAE theme park visitor spend is set to grow six-fold from $105 million in 2016 to $637 million by 2020, stated the report released ahead of the Dubai Entertainment, Amusement, and Leisure Show (Deal).
UAE theme parks are dialing up the “smart” visitor experience to ensure the country remains one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, said industry experts.
"UAE theme parks are on the cutting-edge of leveraging real-time information management technology to enhance the visitor experience," said Andrew Calthorpe, CEO at smart theme park consultancy Condo Protego, which has worked closely with numerous theme parks in the UAE over the past several years.
"Millions of visitors will be able to use mobile apps for ride wait times and ordering concessions, while operators can deliver dynamic peak and off-peak pricing, and enhance visitor safety and security," he stated.
Market research firm PwC predicts that the UAE’s theme park visitors could provide nearly two-thirds of the UAE’s projected 30 million total visitors by 2021.
According to experts, the UAE’s theme parks are serving as ideal test cases for the advanced technology that will fuel the premier mega-event of as Expo 2020 Dubai.
“Monitoring tens of thousands of daily visitors means UAE theme park operators need to have mobile app, Big Data analytics, and data storage solutions that are always available, cost-effective, and can scale up to handle millions of more visitors annually,” remarked Calthorpe.
Condo Protego has seen strong success in enabling UAE theme parks to better manage company and customer information, by deploying Dell-EMC converged infrastructure solutions across backup, networking, processing, replication, and virtualization, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
