Running an escape room is about far more than designing great games.

You’re an employer. A marketer. A problem solver. A technology user. You’re making decisions about when to invest, when to change a room and where to spend money – often while trying to work out where the next batch of bookings is coming from.

That’s why, for our next No Spoilers Escape Room Owners Meet on 5 October, we wanted the content to focus firmly on the challenges that actually come with running an escape room business.

Following our previous owner meetups, we’ve brought together experts from both inside and outside the industry to tackle some of the big questions facing operators right now. It reflects what we’ve tried to build with No Spoilers from the start: useful information, honest conversations and opportunities for the industry to learn from one another.

And we think this might be our strongest line-up yet.

Three very different keynotes

Employment Law Essentials for Escape Room Owners (Nick Cheeseman, NQ Legal)

People are fundamental to an escape room business, but employing them brings responsibilities. Nick will look at the employment law issues owners need to understand, from contracts and workplace policies to managing performance and conduct. More importantly, he’ll look at some of the common pitfalls businesses encounter and how to avoid them.

The Countdown to Lock Out – A Critical Puzzle (Arun Kohli, Beazley)

A criminal threatens to lock down your escape room network. You have hours to respond.

What do you do? Arun’s session takes a slightly different approach to cyber security. Inspired by old-school interactive adventure books, you’ll make the decisions as the incident unfolds.

Pay the ransom? Shut systems down? Keep trading? Call for help? Every decision has consequences.

It’s cyber risk presented in a format escape room owners should feel very much at home with.

Competitive Socialising’s Growth Problem: How to Make Bookings Predictable (Rory Palmer-Rowe, Mustard)

Getting bookings is arguably one of the biggest challenges facing entertainment businesses.

Rory will explore why marketing an experience is different from marketing a conventional product or service, and look beyond some of the usual approaches to consider different ways operators can reach, engage and convert customers.

Then it’s your turn

We don’t want an event where everyone spends the afternoon sitting quietly listening to presentations. Our three round tables put owners into the conversation.

Tom Parslow (Buzzshot) will lead a discussion on automation: what can you automate within your operations and marketing – and, perhaps more importantly, what should you automate?

Sam Wai (Immersif) asks When Should You Replace Your Escape Room? When is a room genuinely past its best? When should you refresh rather than replace? And how do you make that decision commercially rather than emotionally?

Finally, Russell Green (Amplify) will host When Good Ideas Meet Bad Numbers, looking at the financial realities behind the decisions we make as business owners.

These aren’t intended to be lectures. They’re opportunities to compare notes, challenge ideas and hear how other owners are approaching the same problems.

Can the industry work better together?

We’ll finish the day with a panel discussion looking at a bigger question – could the UK escape room industry achieve more by working together?

There are hundreds of operators collectively trying to introduce more people to escape rooms. So where could greater collaboration help? What gets in the way? And what could the industry realistically do together that individual businesses can’t?

We’ll be announcing our panellists shortly.

 Join us on 5 October

The Owners Meet isn’t about insurance. It isn’t a day of sales pitches.

It’s about bringing people who run escape rooms together with people who can help them run those businesses better.

Cyber. Employment. Marketing. Automation. Investment. Finance. Collaboration.

Quite a lot to squeeze into one afternoon.

But then, escape room owners have always been pretty good under time pressure.

Tickets are available now. If you own or operate an escape room or immersive entertainment business, we’d love to see you there on 5 October.

GET YOUR TICKET →