The birth of indoor playground Kiddy Dome

Dustin Schaber, CEO Kiddy Dome, on an adventurous playground for the whole family

Starting the leisure park

It all started in 2003. My father and his business partner operated an old racket centre where sports such as tennis, badminton and squash were practiced. When the golden age of Boris Becker and Steffi Graf was over, this business became less and less popular. At that moment they came into contact with an ELI Play sales manager. During a meeting, the business model 'indoor playgrounds' was discussed, a perfect interpretation for the space. Both (elderly) gentlemen decide that the current tenant is allowed to run the park.

Renewing the playground

The tenant is mainly busy with the playground and has little attention for the sports park. Together with my mother, I decide to take over the sports park in 2008. The takeover of the playground followed in 2013. Due to the changing market, we saw many opportunities for a leisure park and decided to renew the park. After a conversation with Jochen Herrmann of ELI Play we decided to give the park a totally new look & feel. That's when we changed the name from 'Kid & Play' to 'Kiddy Dome'.

The entire playing structure has been renewed in the meantime. We focused on new elements and on creating one complete park. We developed Kiddy Dome into a real brand! In 2014 the renovated playground opened and Kiddy Dome became an immediate success with increasing turnover figures.

What makes your playground unique?

Experience is central. Everything we do contributes to the entire experience of our visitors. Think of a variety of playing equipment, entertainment for every target group and organizing events. We think it's important that the whole family can enjoy themselves during a day out at Kiddy Dome.

A second Kiddy Dome!

Soon, we will open a second playground, Kiddy Dome -Swiss Family Center-, where we focus even more on the unique experience of various target groups. In addition to a comfortable, family-friendly catering area, we will also create a special "men's area", where fathers can watch sports games, play football, play on the pinball machine or just have a beer.

Unique to the new playground is a specially developed donut glider. We believe that the donut glider will be the favourite attraction of many visitors.

How do you create fans?

It’s important to build a very strong brand that children love. The Kiddy Dome mascot is ideal to tie children to the park. They see him at every visit, they can play with him and they can have their picture taken together. Children become 'real friends' with Jimmy!

In addition, we also use other means to bind visitors to our park. We have a Kids Club and Kiddy Magazine to keep in touch with visitors. This makes them think of us at home as well and they can enthuse other people.

Visitors who live nearby come to our park about 5 to 6 times a year. The greater the distance, the less often they come back. In Switzerland we expect visitors who are in the immediate vicinity of the playground to visit us even more often.

Unique experience: parties, theme days and events

In addition to our 'standard' activities, we also organize other events to make our visitors happy. This makes the Family Entertainment Center even more attractive. Every year we organize about 2,000 children's parties, which accounts for 20% of our total income. We also organize theme days, such as Halloween, where the whole playground is decorated in style, children are dressed up and various scary entertainers wander around.

Our After-work Party is very unique. An event for young people who normally don't go to a playground anymore and can now be children again. During this event, our visitors go crazy on the DJ's tunes, jump on the trampolines, climb on climbing frames and enjoy drinks in the cocktail bar. It proves our point that playgrounds are suitable for all ages.