Morning Consult has been polling Americans every two weeks on their comfort levels of engaging in different out-of-home leisure activities. For every activity tracked, the comfort level was on an upswing into the second week in June, after which it has been on a steady decline. Their polls saw a drop in comfort level for every activity and across multiple demographics. Even going out to eat at a restaurant, which has consistently shown the highest comfort level, has dropped 5 percentage points to just slightly more than one-third (36%) of people feeling comfortable doing it right now. Here’s a sample of some of the public activities and their respective comfort levels since the end of April through the middle of July.
The poll results show that this increased caution to visit public activities is true for all types of out-of-home leisure, entertainment and cultural venues, which include location-based entertainment (LBE), family entertainment centers (FECs) and amusement parks.
Results also showed that 2 in 5 adults said they won’t feel safe going to an amusement park, the movies, a concert or a museum until at least 2021.
Polls by Sense360 have found a rising fear in response to the recent surge in Covid-29 infections. In their June 12-18 poll, 31% of adults said the coronavirus is an even bigger threat than people realize. The percentage has been rising since. In their July 10-15 poll, it was 5 percentage points higher at 36% of people now saying it is an even bigger threat than people realize. Their poll also found 4 out of 10 people (42%) not expecting a return to “normal” daily activity for longer than six months.
Covid-19 has also caused nearly half of people (48%) to cancel vacation plans as of the end of June.
Until the threat of coronavirus infections is seriously reduced, and probably not until there is a vaccine and we achieve herd immunity, can we expect a significant financial recovery back to 2019 levels of revenue for any type of location-based leisure, entertainment or cultural business.
Follow me on Twitter and Linkedin – I try to post a few news and information items that are relevant to the out-of-home leisure, LBE and FEC industries a few times each weekday.
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.
