attendance trends

Zhuhai, Friday, 24 October 2025.
Chimelong Ocean Kingdom reported notable attendance growth in 2024, rising to roughly 12.6 million visitors and holding sixth place in the global rankings—a reminder that large domestic destination parks can rival established foreign-branded resorts. The most intriguing fact: China’s integrated resort model—heavy spend on marine exhibits, high-throughput attractions and targeted regional marketing—helped a non-Disney/Universal park secure a top global position. For retail and park operators, this signals shifting footfall patterns and growing local discretionary spending that demand rethought capacity planning, dynamic pricing and merch assortments tuned to longer-stay, family and regional travelers. Investors should factor in lower sensitivity to international travel cycles for well-positioned domestic resorts. Competitive responses may include product differentiation, tighter day-part pricing, and expanded F&B and retail bundles tailored to domestic travel flows to capture incremental per-capita spend in second-tier coastal hubs such as Zhuhai/Hengqin.

Saint Paul, Wednesday, 3 September 2025.
Last Tuesday organizers confirmed the 2025 Minnesota State Fair drew 1,940,869 visitors over 12 days—strongest since 2019 but shy of the 2 million milestone and the 2019 record. Notably, Monday, Aug. 25 set a single-day high with 145,022 entrants, showing demand can spike even as cumulative growth plateaus. For retail and park operators, the numbers spotlight operational constraints: ingress/egress, queue throughput, and capacity caps that blunt annual growth; pricing moves (admission raised to about $20) that affect elasticity; and staffing and concession revenue assumptions tied to peak-day mixes. Benchmarking against 2019 suggests a post‑pandemic normalization rather than runaway recovery, prompting prioritization of targeted capital projects to raise throughput or increase per‑guest spend, refined labor contingency plans, and more granular day‑part marketing. Those responsible for forecasting and investment should treat this as a call to optimize marginal gains in experience and operational throughput to convert high-demand days into sustained annual growth.