Miami is not Myrtle Beach.
You are correct, it is not. They both bring in the same number of tourist per year, but the type of tourists are completely different. Myrtle Beach brings families and golfers. Where Miami brings less families and more known party type people. So I had a hard time finding comparable stats between the two, but from what I can see based on the stats I do have is that the average party size for Miami is around around 2 and 64% of the people that visit Myrtle Beach are families. So Miami doesn't get as many families, which can be your big money maker in attendance and purchases. So that is one strike against Miami market. So now lets look at the reasons the park in Myrtle Beach failed.
1. Price point was too high for the family incomes that were coming in (Only 21% make over 100,000). They had to have this price point because of it being a fully themed parks with rights to pay, just like this proposed park. Ironically the next year you could get tickets much cheaper ($25) and people still did not go. I am thinking this price point will even be higher than the original $55 that Hard Rock had. However from what I can see the avg room rate for myrtle is 85 and the average for Miami is 143. So people do spend more money in Miami. Now to be fair, the 143 includes all taxes and fees where the 85 does not. Also, the summer season was 117, which Miami is summer all year long. I get to this point more below.
2. Families didn't want to leave the beach and golfers are too busy to go to a park. So now, will the type of people go to a park. Well we know most likely the spring break crowd may not. Will the college students have the money for the price point and if they do will they spend it on alcohol or a theme park. How about the party couples? OK, this group I can see going. Then we have families, which for the same reason the myrtle beach families didn't go would also pertain to Miami.
3. Lack of advertising. They could easily fix this one, BUT the people who visited knew about this place it was that they could not pull out of towners in. So they were basing success off the people who already visited. I think this is where Miami would also fail, because yes, they could advertise outside their market, but like Tyler stated, will those people choice to go to Miami or Orlando based on seeing advertisements from this new park vs. advertisements from the three major places in Orlando.
4. Not enough money in the bank. I would hope no other theme park looking to open makes this same mistake. You need to have enough money into the bank to assume you will be in the red for a couple years. HR people did not do this. Nor did the next people who took over. If it could have made it thru 3 or 4 years maybe it would have worked better, but based on the attendance numbers I don't know that time would have helped.
The ONE advantage Miami has over Myrtle Beach is it is a year round destination. However Ironically Myrtle Beach gets the same number of people in a shorter vacation time frame. So the longer season does not mean more attendance. It just means the crowds may be a little more spread out and more locals might go because they can use it and enjoy it year round. Hard Rock was originally supposed to be open year round too, just never could financially make it thru a season.
