New Okinawa theme park aims to tap Japan's tourism boom, become springboard to Asian markets
TOKYO: The company behind a new nature adventure park on Japan's southern island of Okinawa is hoping the country's huge tourism boom will get it off to a raring start, and that with time propel the startup further into Asia and other markets.
Junglia, a 60ha site built on an old golf course and featuring more than 20 attractions from a hot air balloon ride and buggy riding to treetop walking and a "Dinosaur Safari", is set to open on Jul 25.
Costing some ¥70 billion (US$634 million), the park is the brainchild of Tsuyoshi Morioka, chief executive of entertainment firm Katana. Morioka, a theme park veteran, is credited with turning around flagging attendance at Universal Studios Japan (USJ) in Osaka, western Japan, by bringing in Harry Potter-themed attractions.
Japan is experiencing an unprecedented boom in tourism, fuelled by a weaker yen, with overseas visitors climbing 47 per cent to a record 36.9 million last year. Their spending shot up 53 per cent to ¥8.1 trillion, making tourism - which counts as an export in GDP data - the country's second biggest export sector after cars.
The Japanese also love a good theme park with Tokyo's Disney resorts having enduring success and USJ, despite some early financial woes, proving popular. That said, many parks have also failed.
Yu Shioji, the chairman of the Amusement Park Society of Japan, believes Junglia will have "almost no chance" of long-term success given that there are other nature adventure parks in Japan and its relatively high cost - ¥6,930 yen per day pass for locals and ¥8,800 yen for international visitors.
While acknowledging long odds for long-term profitability for any amusement park, Morioka - who considers himself a maths nerd - said that by his calculations, Junglia has more than a 70 per cent chance of success.
He expects several thousand visitors a day to Junglia and says it can be profitable even if it only garners half the number of visitors of the nearby Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, which has around 3 million per year.
Morioka added that demand for theme parks and higher value-added tourism services in Japan is here to stay, given that many Asian countries are growing wealthier.
"The weak yen is a tailwind, but the number of people who want to visit Japan will increase structurally regardless of the currency effect," he said.
The Japanese government has said it wants to boost the number of overseas visitors to 60 million per year by 2030.
If Junglia is successful, Morioka says developing smaller attractions that cost less than ¥100 billion, unlike mega theme parks like Disney's and USJ, could be easily replicated in other Asian markets like Taiwan and Indonesia.
Listing Katana would be an option to fund future growth, he said, adding that he saw a lot of potential for theme parks built around Japanese anime if he can convince content creators to license their intellectual property.
"I think it would be good if there was a third option in cities around the globe after Disney and Universal," said Morioka. "I want to develop niches where they can't go and create a third force in attractions in the world that originates from Japan."
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