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Vietnam’s Largest FEC Opens

Helio Center, considered Vietnam’s largest and most modern FEC, opened to the public on February 11, 2015 in time for the Tet holiday. The 157,000 square foot (14,600 square meter) indoor and 2.5-acre (one hectare) outdoor family entertainment center is located Da Nang, Vietnam. Da Nang is located on the coast midway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Ming City (formerly Saigon). It has a metropolitan area of one million and is a very popular tourist location for Vietnamese and foreigners alike with its beaches, 5-star resorts and less crowded and laid back lifestyle.

Randy White, CEO of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, designers and producers of Helio Center, said work started on the project in July 2012 with market and culture feasibility. It then immediately proceeded to design and construction. Considering the complexity of the building design with its ground floor, mezzanine and a basement garage for 1,000 motorbikes and 53 automobiles plus sourcing and procurement of entertainment equipment and finishes from all over the world, Randy said, “The FEC was actually completed in a very timely manner, even by Western standards.”

Man Quang, CEO of Helio Center, said, “It is exciting to be able to bring a totally new entertainment experience to Vietnamese people with this state-of-art, world class FEC. I am confident it will be a major attraction and bring much joy and happiness to both residents and tourists for many years to come.”

The FEC includes both adult-oriented and family attractions:

  •   14 lanes of duckpin bowling including VIP lanes
  •   Children’s edutainment (play and discovery) center
  •   Indoor ice skating
  •   4 indoor rides
  •   Combination Ballocity and soft modular play structure
  •   150 redemption, simulator and video games
  •   Redemption prize store
  •   Indoor go-karts
  •   19 private karaoke rooms
  •   Celebration and birthday party rooms
  •   Multi-purpose theater-style performance, karaoke and meeting room
  •   Coffee and bakery café
  •   Food court featuring five different world cuisines and a bakery

The outdoor area includes:

  •   Children’s discovery play garden
  •   Multi-level seating for the coffee and bakery cafe
  •   Restaurant village which will seat over 600 buildings featuring different cuisines
  •   Children’s boating school
  •   Children’s motorbike and automobile driving school
  •   Bumper boats

 

At peak times, the FEC will accommodate 4,000 guests. The center employs a staff of 600. Helio Center cost more than USD 45 million by Western cost equivalents.

Helio Center Grand Opening Ribbon CuttingHelio Center started its marketing campaign, predominately on Facebook, well before opening. By opening, it had already registered 50,000 members who will use its Power Card debit card system to pay for games, attractions and food and beverage, get discounts and earn points towards VIP status.

Unusual for entertainment projects, White Hutchinson designed the building with a natural daylighting roof monitor system that allows the majority of the center to be totally lit by daylight during the day to save on electrical lighting costs. The project also incorporates a number of special acoustic treatments to prevent it from being too noisy.

A unique feature of the basement garage is the security system it has to prevent the theft of motorbikes, something you won’t find in the West. There is a small charge to park your motorbike, 2,000 dong (10 cents US). When a motorbike enters the garage, they stop at the security check-in, pay and a computer-camera system records both the driver’s face and the license plate. Then when leaving, the driver drives through a security checkpoint that verifies the original driver is on the motorbike by matching the license to the original photo of their face.

About Randy White

Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.

Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.

Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).

He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.

Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.

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