Escape rooms are on a roll. In cities such as Los Angeles or Budapest they are one of the most popular forms of local entertainment according to TripAdvisor. This trend also reaches Poland and is more and more actively used in tourism.
Escape rooms are a series of riddles and puzzles developed according to a specific plot and arranged and played out in rooms from which a group of participants must get out. After solving each task based on words, numbers or logic, players receive another clue that brings them closer to completing the entire game. The context is limited only by the creators' imagination. Sometimes you have to get out of underground dungeons controlled by mysterious forces, and other times you have to solve a criminal puzzle of the interwar period or experience an adventure straight from a movie.
The most popular escape rooms are often used to promote whole cities or regions and to attract tourists - cities such as Los Angeles, New York or Budapest regularly publish lists of the most interesting rooms of this type which they offer on tourist portals. According to Bartosz Idzikowski from Lock.me website, in Poland we can also talk about tourist movement related to escape rooms. - Escape rooms in the beginning were the domain of big cities and they were noticed as a valuable tourist attraction. On the one hand they are pleasant, engaging entertainment for a group of friends, which takes about an hour, on the other hand their plot and atmosphere often refer to tradition or history of a given place. That is why gradually escape rooms started to appear also in small towns, or even near particular attractions, like castles, where they are a strong magnet for tourists. Not everybody is interested in sightseeing, so such an additional, highly engaging, story-telling attraction may convince people to visit - explains Idzikowski.
From a tourist point of view escape rooms have a very important advantage. Through the game set in a specific context and reality they allow to feel the atmosphere of the place, history and time they refer to. "The Chamber of Secrets was a kind of entertainment, designed by Count Franz Hubert Tiele-Winckler in the 19th century for his numerous guests visiting the castle. Today it is restored for posterity on the basis of residual information found in the archives of Moszna Castle and in folk legends". - This is how the organizers encourage visitors to visit the castle at Moszna in Opolskie voivodeship, Poland. In addition to sightseeing or taking pictures, visitors can experience the atmosphere of the castle from its glory days. However, there are many more examples of rooms aimed at tourists. They also have a very diverse character.
Escape room "Tajemnica Sztolni Czarnej" (The Secret of the Black Adit) in Złoty Stok in Kłodzko Valley, Poland, unfortunately closed since pandemic time, invited you to the underground. Participants of the game went down into the former gold mine and moved around the mine gallery, which is only partially open to the public. Together with their team they take on the role of sappers whose task was to clear the mine of explosives placed by former rulers of Lower Silesia and finally get out of the mine.
As the representatives of Polish local governments say, escape rooms have been closely observed by them for a long time and recently they have been used for promotion more and more often. - The first escape room in Wrocław was the first room in Poland, that's why we got interested in this form of entertainment right away. Cities are strongly focused on "weekend tourists'' who want to see and experience as much as possible in a short time. Escape rooms are a great combination of fun and education about our city. So we try to help the escape room movement as much as we can. We have 64 such rooms, which is a very rich offer and possibilities - explains Ewelina Bartoszewska-Kman from the City of Wroclaw.
PR expert
15 years of Public Relations experience. Worked for brands such as Allegro, Microsoft, Lock.me, Global e-Mobility Forum, Martin Kaczmarski, Rochstar TV Production. Communication manager of the team participating in the Cross Country FIA World Cup and in the FIA World Rallycross Championship. Organized events around TV series premieres, was responsible for the media coverage of skydiving events and records. Works for the escape room industry since 2017.
Despite the fact that the escape room market is not yet of full age, it can be said that it has already passed the phase of growing up. One of the elements of its development were various attempts at "cataloging". After a few years, we live in a world of a few successful projects and many "zombie" sites, which are scary in their appearance and database.
