Recently a senior executive of a leading European holiday parks company told me: “We are sending a team of our top arcade managers out to the Middle East to take a look at some of the big projects there. Did you know that some of the best amusement-oriented arcades in the world are being developed there?”
That was a shaker. It was the kind of thing that brings you down to earth with a bump. We have been producing reams of material on the Middle East arcades business for years, and in two months (March and April) annually we publish huge issues of InterGame specifically devoted to the developing markets in the Middle East.
I refrained from the obvious retort: “They’re called family entertainment centres there and if you’d kept your eye on InterGame from five years ago, you’d know all about them!” It revealed the rather insular world in which some of these operators live. The gent I was talking to was actually an arcade within a company with a chain of holiday camps and caravan parks.
Wouldn’t you think that he’d be familiar with the trade press? How do these people keep informed of what’s going on? The most obvious source of info should be the trade press, whether it is one of our publications or someone else’s.
I can remember perhaps 25 years ago the publication I was with at that time conducted a survey from its stand at the old ATEI show in London. The objective was to ask a series of questions of visitors, designed to build a picture of their means of communication. The results were quite startling: Asked the question: “How do you find out about what’s new in the market?”, 52 per cent said trade shows, 48 per cent said trade press, then it was a long way down to “word of mouth,” etc. I remember reflecting to my colleagues at the time that given the close vote between a trade show and the trade press you’d think suppliers would take a rather different attitude towards magazines.
“They’ll spend £50k [and this was 20 years ago!] on a stand at ATEI for three days, but if you ask them to take a full page ad in the magazine it is rather as though you’re seeking a donation of bone marrow!”
I don’t think things have changed, although no-one in the amusement industry spends £50k on a show stand these days; but they do at ICE for the gaming sector, and they are just as parsimonious when it comes to budgets.
Going back to our uninformed friend who is heading a delegation to the Middle East; I am sure it won’t just be a "jolly" for his company’s managers and I am equally sure that he is not typical of today’s operator in his under-developed reading choices. But the incident does illustrate a mind-set within operating circles that confines working practices to well-trod paths.
