One bird, two bird, red bird, blue bird | Group Tour Magazine Blog
One bird, two bird, red bird, blue bird | Group Tour Magazine Blog
One bird, two bird, red bird, blue bird
| Rovio Entertaiment, the company behind Angry Birds, made $100 million dollars last year. | |
This blog ponders what Angry Birds has to teach tour planners about the importance of creativity
By Amanda Black
Something old and forgotten came back into my life this weekend: something involving red birds, egg-dropping white birds and disgruntled green piggies.
If you play Angry Birds, you knew exactly what I meant. If you don’t, it’s the game for phones and tablets that has taken over pop culture.
I hadn’t played the game for months, mostly because I lost my iPod and lost interest. On Saturday morning, I was straightening up when I found my lost toy. It was exactly where I thought it should be, so it was beyond me why it took months to find it. So I charged it up and the first thing I did was play a new round of Angry Birds — the first of many.
Later that day, I headed down to a birthday party for my best friends’ two oldest kids. Their theme was, of course, Angry Birds. Their mother blamed me for that, since I am the one that got them hooked.
It started out as something innocent. Their mom and I were talking one night at dinner and the young daughter was bored by the conversation. I handed her my phone to pass the time and showed her this silly game with birds, slingshots and greedy pigs.
As the game’s popularity grew, its maker, Rovio Entertainment, expanded the universe. They started out with plush toys and moved on to real-life board games, advertising contracts and even a theme park in Rovio’s native Finland.
Sarkanniemi Adventure Park opened its Angry Birds rides in June. This is expected to be the first of many Angry Birds theme parks in the world. The Tampere, Finland, park does offer group rates and a number of other rides and activities.
Rovio, the Helsinki company, made more than $100 million in revenue in 2011 — not bad when you consider the games cost under a dollar to download. The company added 200 jobs and reached nearly 200 million users across all platforms during that same era.
CEO Mikael Hed attributed it to creativity and well as investment, which will take the company towards the future.
“To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services,” he said.
Hed’s advice crosses boundaries far beyond casual game makers. Tour planners do well when they harness the forces of creativity and investment.
What are you doing to make your tours innovative? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time, but you can branch out and look for new opportunities.
Can you add something that will keep your travelers happy and coming back for more?
It takes time, and it takes some investment, but the returns are more that worth it.
By Amanda Black
Something old and forgotten came back into my life this weekend: something involving red birds, egg-dropping white birds and disgruntled green piggies.
If you play Angry Birds, you knew exactly what I meant. If you don’t, it’s the game for phones and tablets that has taken over pop culture.
I hadn’t played the game for months, mostly because I lost my iPod and lost interest. On Saturday morning, I was straightening up when I found my lost toy. It was exactly where I thought it should be, so it was beyond me why it took months to find it. So I charged it up and the first thing I did was play a new round of Angry Birds — the first of many.
Later that day, I headed down to a birthday party for my best friends’ two oldest kids. Their theme was, of course, Angry Birds. Their mother blamed me for that, since I am the one that got them hooked.
It started out as something innocent. Their mom and I were talking one night at dinner and the young daughter was bored by the conversation. I handed her my phone to pass the time and showed her this silly game with birds, slingshots and greedy pigs.
As the game’s popularity grew, its maker, Rovio Entertainment, expanded the universe. They started out with plush toys and moved on to real-life board games, advertising contracts and even a theme park in Rovio’s native Finland.
Sarkanniemi Adventure Park opened its Angry Birds rides in June. This is expected to be the first of many Angry Birds theme parks in the world. The Tampere, Finland, park does offer group rates and a number of other rides and activities.
Rovio, the Helsinki company, made more than $100 million in revenue in 2011 — not bad when you consider the games cost under a dollar to download. The company added 200 jobs and reached nearly 200 million users across all platforms during that same era.
CEO Mikael Hed attributed it to creativity and well as investment, which will take the company towards the future.
“To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services,” he said.
Hed’s advice crosses boundaries far beyond casual game makers. Tour planners do well when they harness the forces of creativity and investment.
What are you doing to make your tours innovative? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time, but you can branch out and look for new opportunities.
Can you add something that will keep your travelers happy and coming back for more?
It takes time, and it takes some investment, but the returns are more that worth it.
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