In the recent few years the curve of escape rooms opening up around the world has flattened out. This doesn’t mean that there are no new players coming on the field but each year about just as many escape rooms close their doors as many opens.

The immersive landscape however is still booming and more and more venues like game shows, escape arcades and quiz arenas open up. This clearly shows that the market is still hungry for immersive experiences but also means that the escape room industry is in the long game now.

A dozen owners from both sides of the pond gathered for a roundtable discussion to exchange ideas around networking and how to utilise that network through collaborations and partnership.

Networking best practices

After a quick round of introductions I kicked off the topic of networking best practices with my personal list of reccomendations. As an escape room business consultant and someone who’s responsible in our escape room to keep the fingers on the industry’s pulse I mostly network with other owners and then the roundtable added their own personal recommendations for finding valuable connections in their own local communities.

Conferences

Transworld in St. Louis - usually February or March - is well attended by ER owners but it is also a great place to take a peek outside of what’s happening in the haunted house industry and the Christmas lights world. Great place to take inspiration for adjacent industries.

RECON - LA this year in August - is solely organised for escape room people. Attended by both enthusiasts and owners, it is a wonderful place to hang out with likeminded people who are just as crazy about our industry as you are.

Game On - I’m organising this one in London on the 21st of May - an ER conference focused on the business side of the industry. Trying to fill the void left behind by the two big European conferences - ERIC and Up the Game - that sadly never relaunched after covid.

Other business conferences. An owner who works primarily with corporates shared their idea of showing up to business conferences to make connections.

Some of the conferences I’ve attended throughout the years as a speaker, panelist or sponsor.

Facebook groups

It might be a generational thing but many of us owners hang out in Facebook groups. I’m personally part of at least 10 of them and started one myself. These groups are a wealth of knowledge about design practices, new and upcoming ideas, customer best practices and the list goes on.

💡One attendee pointed out that using the search function reveals many years of knowledge

Apart from the big groups like the Escape Room Owners and the Escape Room Start Ups and Owners many form smaller localised groups based on their area or a shared interest. You should definitely join your own local group for more localised help and exchange of ideas.

Just the top groups out of at least a dozen that I’m part of

One example that was highly regarded by attendees was the Female Room Escape Owners group where there are strict rules enforced by the admins only allowing constructive help and feedback.

An interesting observation I’ve made is that the discussion in these groups turned towards business topics in the past few months. I’ve done a research last November - categorised the last 100 posts based on topic in Escape Room Start Ups - to see what were the dominating topics. (See graph below)

What we can see 6 months apart is that although ‘Building / Design / Tech Support’ related posts and discussions are still dominating, there is a significant drop in their share. People’s attention turned towards more business related questions like ‘Marketing’ and ‘Business Developmen’ topics.

Chamber of Commerce

It was echoed by all attendees that everyone should join their local chamber of commerce and actively take part in it. The chamber is one of the easiest and best ways to network with other local business owners.

One attendee pointed out that you should host an event for your chamber so other business owners in your area get to see for themselves what ER’s are about so you can more easily leverage these connections in partnerships.

Other networking ideas

There were other valuable ideas shared by the group for building your network in your local market:

Someone reached out to home schooling parental groups. Another attendee reinforced this idea as one being appreciated by these parents as a homeschooling mum herself.
Another person shared that they collaborate with the local visitor bureau that puts them front end centre for business people looking to bring their business to town.
And lastly people simply recommended to cold reach out to businesses you would like to network with. It’s always a good idea to offer a free game for them to break the ice.

As we were wrapping up the networking section of the roundtable the question of whether we are all friends in the industry or competitors came up. It seemed like a general consensus that we should keep good relations with fellow owners as a rising tide rises all boats.

We might be competing for the customer who is in town for just a few days and plays only one game but at the end of the day in 2024 a dominant part of our customers are the locals. (Very touristy areas might differ) So we should nourish our local community looking to play immersive experiences.

Partnerships and collaborations

For the better half of the roundtable the group discussed past and present partnerships and how they are collaborating with other businesses.

Here are some of the interesting partnerships that were shared with the roundtable

We’ve swapped newsletters with other immersive experiences in town where we advertised them to our customers and vica versa
In 2015 we collaborated with an internal design university to design some chairs we still use to this day. We also hired some talented people thanks to this project.
When a client of mine launched their cat themed escape room they’ve coordinated with their local cat cafe
Someone collaborated with the local autism community
Another person collaborated with a charity that works with people who have mobility issues. They’ve built a special landing page on their website to make it easier for people to decide if this experience is for them or not.
An owner from Brighton shared their current partnership with a local gay nightclub. They are building an outdoor trail for them to promote the nightclub and the escape rooms.
An owner in Chester is currently working on a collaboration with their local zoo to build an edutaining trail
And last but not least a US owner shared details about their successful collaboration with a local theatre group where they designed a murder mystery for intermissions.

A common thread

What became clear from all these amazing partnerships and collaborations is that most businesses are more than on board to gamify an aspect of their business. And that’s what we are experts in in this industry.

In summary

Just like the Future of Escape Rooms roundtable a couple of months ago this was a lively discussion with many perspectives from around the world.

As it is clear from the flattening curve we are in the long game now so we need to take every opportunity we have to embed ourselves deeper and deeper into our local markets and communities.

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Networking and Partnerships - Roundtable Discussion // Takeaways