A NEW immersive dining, shopping and entertainment attraction will open in Tokyo next spring, as more tourists flood into Japan and consumers stage a post-pandemic retail recovery. 

Immersive Fort Tokyo will offer 12 attractions spread across six shops and restaurants, putting visitors in the middle of fictional situations such as a murder mystery or a treasure hunt. The venue will be entirely indoors, making use of a shopping mall in the middle of Tokyo Bay that closed its doors in 2022. 

The new destination is the brainchild of Tsuyoshi Morioka, a former Procter & Gamble executive who made his name when he turned around Universal Studios Japan by introducing new attractions, including The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. He is seeking to tap into a wider global trend towards immersive entertainment, an industry worth an estimated US$61.8 billion in 2019.

“This will be the world’s first permanent immersive entertainment facility,” he told reporters at a news conference on Thursday (Oct 5). “You will be a part of the entertainment.”

The 30,000-square-metre venue will take up two floors. Pricing and details of specific attractions will be released later. 

Katana, the company set up by Morioka in 2017, has worked to revamp other parks in Japan, such as the Huis Ten Bosch near the southern city of Nagasaki and the Seibuen Amusement Park near Tokyo.

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Tokyo Disney Resort’s two parks and Universal Studios Japan in Osaka were among the top five most visited amusement and theme parks worldwide in 2022; each place attracts more than 10 million people a year, according to a report by researcher Aecom and the Themed Entertainment Association. 

Sales at amusement and theme parks in Japan almost doubled to 671 billion yen (S$6.2 billion) in the fiscal year ended March, compared to the year before. This was 93 per cent of pre-pandemic levels four years ago, government data showed. 

Morioka added that he wanted to bring content that is known within and outside Japan to Immersive Fort Tokyo. “Having a place like this in Tokyo makes sense, and I hope it will push more travellers to come and enjoy Japan. I want to make Tokyo lead the world in this field, and take it to the world.”

According to Tokyo Disney Resort operator Oriental Land, travellers from overseas made up about 10 per cent of the park’s visitors in 2019, at the peak of Japan’s tourism boom. That year, the nation welcomed more than 30 million foreign visitors. 

The number of foreign visitors to Japan in August surpassed two million, 86 per cent of the numbers in August 2019, said Japan’s National Tourism Organisation. BLOOMBERG