China’s ‘Netflix’ iQiyi to open theme park with VR based on its shows

Beijing – Chinese Video’s platform iqiyi Announced Thursday that it was later planning this year to open its first full -fledged theme park in China on the basis of characters from its own shows.

The next “Iqiyi Land” is expected to open its doors in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, just over two hours from Shanghai by train at high speed. The company said that the themed park will include seven types of attractions – including immersive theater, interactive cinema platforms and experiences that use virtual reality – largely based on characters from films and television dramas from Iqiyi.

This is the last business to bet that local consumers will spend more for experiences, despite lukewarm retail sales.

LEGOLAND opens his First China Resort In Shanghai this summer, while Warner Bros. Discovery announced last month that he opened a “Harry Potter studio tour” in 2027 in the same city. Chinese toy company Pop Mart opened a “pop field” on the theme in Beijing at the end of 2023, which became the most popular attraction in the city’s business district, depending on the dianping rankings.

Iqiyi’s planned theme park is based on the recent success of the company with attractions specific to virtual reality.

The company has developed a technology that combines VR headsets with moving platforms – giving visitors the impression they work, go up on boats or sit in a flying car. This means that themed park experience can be tablet in a space As small as a square 57 feet long.

Since Iqiyi’s first virtual reality experience, open in Shanghai two years ago, the company has worked with business partners to open more than 40 locations in at least 20 Chinese cities. A VR experience based on “Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty by Iqiyi: to the west” won more than 100,000 visitors during its first year of opening, according to the company.

Virtual reality, games and artificial intelligence have enabled the emergence of “distributed” themed parks which are more compact, interactive and capable of iterating content faster, Hang Zhang, Vice-President of Iqiyi, in a Chinese declaration translated by CNBC.

He said that some of the VR experiences would first be published in Iqiyi Land before being launched in other sites.

Iqiyi’s shares have closed almost 3% more in US trade on Thursday and increased by 14% for the year so far.

The revenues of the theme park of continental China is expected to exceed 480 billion yuan ($ 67 billion) this year, with more than 500 million visitors, according to data shared by the International Association of Parks and Amusement attractions. It would be exponentially from 30.39 billion yuan recorded in 86 large themed parks in continental China in 2023, just after the end of COVVI-19 pandemic checks, data showed.

The parks are increasingly using a mixture of virtual reality to hire guests, while using AI tools to manage the crowd, said the association. He added that parks also combine the world intellectual property franchises with national stories in China.

The association announced on Wednesday that Disney Parks International would speak to his Asia Expo this summer in Shanghai.

DisneyIncluding Disneyland in Shanghai opened in 2016, a 28% increase in annual slip of international parks and experiences The operating result during the quarter ended on December 28, unlike a 5% drop in the United States

ComcastIncluding the Universal Studios Beijing opened in 2021, said higher income In its international theme parks, compensate for the attendance of lower guests in its American parks in the fourth quarter.

Tourism was a rare light point on the consumer market that is also dull in China. The consumer price index, an indicator of domestic demand, increased by only 0.2% last year while the tourist component increased by 3.5%.

China’s plan to increase consumption this year specifically called to develop the economy of experience. Iqiyi has already worked with a local tourism council to produce a television drama in a distant part of Chinaattract visitors.

However, competition in content remains fierce. Iqiyi declared an 8% drop in revenues from 2024 to 29.23 billion yuan, reversing an increase of 10% the previous year.

Themed park projects can also deal with delays.

A Legoland in the province of Sichuan of Western China was Initially planned to open by 2023. When CNBC contacted the operator Merlin Entertainments about the project, the company stressed only the opening of Legoland summer in Shanghai this summer.

Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUNIVERSAL, parent company of CNBC.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect the correct title of the Iqiyi drama, “Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty: To the West”. A previous version was based on a translation provided, which was inaccurate.