MUMBAI: Summer vacations are over and kids are back to school. However, it’s not just the kids who are racking their brain solving sums in school. The entire kids recreation sector has been making permutation and combinations to launch various marketing campaigns to keep the footfalls intact. Launching one such campaign is the Mexico originated indoor edutainment conglomerate Kidzania’s India venture, which has announced attractive discounts for the monsoons.

The venture is targeting first timers who could not explore the experience because of pricing with the Wow Monsoon campaign. Visitors can avail 40 per cent discount by booking over the counter post 4 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Whereas visitors booking ticket online 15 days prior to their visit will get 15 per cent discount throughout the day on weekdays.

“We want to drive the online booking and that’s why we announced the 15 per cent offer. Soon we are going to be launching an app and hence we want to make online ticketing a habit,” asserts Kidzania CMO Viraj Jit Singh.

Being an indoor amusement park Kidzania is making efforts to extract maximum benefit of the weather conditions. “Kidzania is a well covered amusement park and hence it secures parents’ assurance as we take total care of kids’ safety. Hence during the monsoon season we become the exclusive destination for visitors so we launch many such discount offers. It is something we practiced last year too and we tasted good success,” adds Singh.

 Kidzania’s doles out 80 per cent of marketing spend on print and radio, while the booming digital media gets 15-20 per cent of the pie. “Digital media is booming and we are certainly strategising to make more use of the medium. Marketing strategy differs from time to time and so does the spend. We target across the socio economic class of India and all the marketing campaigns are targeted to them,” opines Singh.

Kidzania has more than 1,47,000 likes on its Facebook page. All the creatives and strategising is done by Kidzania’s in-house marketing team.

Reports predict an increase of four per cent over the next five years in the average Indian’s spend on recreation, which brings a lot of optimism to the sector. New players are coming in and existing conglomerates are expanding their base by invading into new territory. The enhanced competition is a compliment, feels Singh. “The sector has a lot of potential and in the next few years it will take a good shape. We are expanding to NCR by the start of next financial year (2016) and then we have plans of launching in the south too. The economic condition of the country is growing substantially, disposable income is increasing and that’s why I feel the sector has a lot of potential,” he adds.

The months of December and January attract maximum visitors, but footfall remains constant throughout the year. “When schools are on, we get a lot of school excursions so the footfall more or less remains the same. We already had more than 300 schools visiting us, there are different packages, which we offer and all of that depends on the number of students coming in. Besides excursions, Kidzania is emerging as the destination for birthday celebration,” concludes Singh.