Real-life escape rooms as a new recreational attraction: the case of Turkey

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically and empirically investigate experiences of real-life escape rooms, a phenomenon that has gained prominence in recent years. An exploratory empirical study of visitors’ (escapers) experiences of 33 escape rooms in Turkey was conducted using content analysis. A total of 1079 reviews were extracted and used in the analysis. Data were collected from TripAdvisor – a well-known website – that allows guests to share their experiences from all around the world. The findings demonstrate that escape room attractions provide authenticity and flow experiences through the challenging activities and social component of the games. Furthermore, the findings show that visitors enjoy experiencing novelty-seeking (authenticity) and hedonistic experience-seeking (flow) and a feeling of being outside time and place.