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Since its Inception a couple of decades ago, escape room games have developed and evolved in huge leaps and bounds. Coming from the near and far sides of yesteryear, today anyone thinking of delving into the escape room business will need to have a proper business plan and some serious backup cash. In the early days there was little competition, and opening a local venture with just a couple of rooms could generate some considerable income for the effort required. But in today's business world, where escape room games are rife with tough competition, you will have very little chance of succeeding unless you decide to go all in, which means spending some serious money, both to setup and to maintain the new business until itís self-sufficient.
In order to give customers the best bang for their buck and to keep them entertained as well as returning to play, it's imperative that you understand that working alone would be impossible. Eventually all Escape room businesses will need to scale if they wish to stay profitable. This means having the right manpower at the very beginning. So apart from having the right environment, in that you have designed both the rooms and games for optimal performance, you will also need to employ the right people. In fact we would suggest that because escape rooms are so customer-centric, you will need to create and manage a team who are totally motivated to produce the best results, both for the business and for the customer.
Itís the business-owner part of your job that is not just giving customers value for money, but also to ensure that your employees have a working environment that is highly conductive to maintaining motivation and delivering on the various tasks and goals that are unnecessary for an escape room. For the minimum you'll need the following highly qualified and experienced staff:
Chief executive officer
Manager
Accountant cashier
Marketing and sales officer
Social networking games instructor or game master
Customer car and front desk
Cleaners
These of the shoulders that the whole business will rest upon. The job is to increase the management effectiveness by helping with selecting training, coaching, counseling, and disciplining the manager. He/she will also be responsible for implementing and creating the business mission, itís vision, and overall direction. This will include deciding the prices as well as signing any business deals. All business related documentation will pass through their hands and at the end of the day, they are the ones who evaluate the success or failure of the whole organisation.
The manager is essentially tasked with overseeing the smooth running of the whole operation. They will hold regular meetings with all the staff as well as with any stakeholders. They will also ensure that the operation of the games and all the equipment used in the escape room is kept up to the maximum standards by using preventive maintenance. The manager is also responsible for recruitment and interviewing, as well as carrying out induction training for new team members during their probationary period. On the whole, their job can be summed up with overseeing the smooth running of the day-to-day activities in the escape room games business.
Their realm is of the rooms themselves and everything that goes on within them. Their skill lies in both selling the game and maintaining the immersive experience during the gameplay sessions. They also need to be able to tell the story of each game and ideally need to be socially aware, and have likable personalities. To a large degree, they will act as the face of your business, and so it's super important that you only employ those who you believe will enhance the business in the eyes of the customers. Finally they are responsible for recommending any worn out or damaged props to be replaced or repaired.
The main responsibility here is to identify and reach out to clients and find business opportunities that will allow the escape room business to grow by following leads and contacts. The job also encompasses handling any business research, including market surveys, and feasibility studies, and sharing and implementing the results. The bottom line is that their responsibility is to maintain and increase sales.
The role here is to be responsible for financial aspects associated with running the business. Based on their knowledge of the current financial situation, they would be expected to make financial forecasts as well as risk analysis. They also provide the daily today financial tasks such as cash management, financial reporting, and general ledger accounting. They are also responsible for overseeing payroll, as well as developing any financial systems that might be useful to help the business run more smoothly.
You might refer to this as ìfront of houseî if you were a hotel or restaurant. The job is to welcome members and potential customers by greeting them in person, as well as dealing with telephone enquiries. As they are the face of customer service, which is probably the most essential aspect of your business, it is important that they are, first and foremost, people persons. They will also be directly marketing to customers with any new information on the escape room businesses products or promotional campaigns, so will need to provide both helpful and accurate information to clients, whenever they make any enquiries.
We cannot stress enough just how important having clean public spaces is to all customers. In this age of social media, and of social media reviews, it is imperative that all the rooms and facilities, including the reception area and toilets, are spotlessly clean. Many escape rooms try to save money by employing the games masters as cleaners. We do not approve of this. A game master already has a full time job to do. And, in order to maintain absolute cleanliness, itís a full-time job in itself.
When the business is starting, it may seem like a good idea to mix some of these jobs together and have just one or two people doing all of them. Unfortunately this is a huge mistake and the business will suffer accordingly. Where there's intense competition coming from surrounding escape rooms, you will need to focus all efforts on each individual job, by employing the right person to do the right job. You'd be surprised how tiring it is if just one person tries to combine even two of the above jobs. By nature, escape room games have very long days often ending very late in the evening, in order to maximise the bookings. It's not correct to then ask the games master, for example. who has been working all day. to now embark on cleaning the rooms. including the reception area and the toilets. At the end of the day, if you want to start an escape room business, you need to ensure that you have enough funds to pay all the above positions until the business breaks even. In other words, be fair and don't be cheap!
