10 Steps to Avoid Chapter 7 and 11

How do you fix the post-Covid world?  How do you make people happy and delighted after four years of unprecedented sickness, cultural shifts, economic uncertainties, isolation, and loss of control?  The majority of our engagements these days ask for the roadmap to successful projects, those that will fix or avoid Chapter 7 and 11.

A whole long while ago, I wrote an article with my mentor, Buzz Price, about the many failures of certain themed restaurants and attractions.  I recently looked it over and was very surprised to see that it still has relevance for development of new attractions today, post Covid., Thus, I thought I would refresh our memories because these are still very true.  Here are 10 ways to avoid bankruptcy when planning a new retail, dining, entertainment or cultural attraction.

1. When planning, balance revenue generation in the major categories: attractions, food service and merchandise.
2. Spend time computing capacity.  Indoor attractions are hard to justify because of constrained capacity.
3. Attractions are driven by opportune locations, preferably in the path of major attendance generators.  Stadium crowds at sporting events may not provide the required flow because of game-day surges.
4. High front-end R&D costs incurred in anticipation of a fast rollout are a plague.
5. Study the market and understand the nuances of its preferences.  Pick your niches carefully and stick to them throughout planning and operation.  Don’t try to change consumer behavior.  The devil is in the details.
6. Keeps your eyes wide open and try to be objective about your passion project.  You may think you have invented the next internet, but your market may not.  On the other hand, be enthusiastic about the project and its greatest cheerleader.  Keep a balance between your passion and market-driven objectivity.
7. Narrowly concepted attractions won’t find a broad-based market.  Along those lines, clear and concise branding is key.  Make sure your brand message is clear to your customer.
8. Assure that you have a critical mass of attractions to generate visitor interest for the required length of stay. 
9. Use realistic assumptions when looking to the future.  Respect comparative and competitive performance.  If you do better than projected, you can fix the problem (in most, but not all cases).
10. The attraction must start up fully formed.  Phase I needs to be a complete show. Undercapitalized projects have a high failure rate.  Create realistic models for development cost, revenue and expense.

All in all, whether pre-COVID or Post-COVID, whether decades ago or today, the rules still apply.  Please tell us about your new projects, what new rules you’ve discovered and how you’re doing in the post-Covid environment.