As if the active video game arcades and massive indoor water parks aren't enough to keep hotel guests busy, Great Wolf Resorts (NASDAQ:WOLF) is breaking through the walls of virtual reality to dish out a fantasy game with real world applications.
At its Pocono Mountains lodge, the company is teaming up with video game developer Creative Kingdoms to launch MagiQuest for its resort guests. Kids and adults alike can take part in the family-friendly adventure that finds players completing quests and challenges throughout the resort in order to advance through the game. Interactive wands record their achievements and grant them access to higher levels and greater powers.
Resorts have been offering scavenger hunts and trivia challenges for ages. Using technology to make it more attractive to jaded video game junkies sounds like the perfect strategy to win over the upscale crowd that is paying a couple hundred bucks for a night at the entertaining lodge.
It's not just the stateside teen smitten on Vivendi Universal's (NYSE:V) World of Warcraft. Fantasy games have translated well all over the world. In China, companies like NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES), Shanda Interactive (NASDAQ:SNDA), and The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) sometimes have hundreds of thousands of players taking part in the same virtual community.
It's big business, and it may very well be what saves Great Wolf. The company has struggled since going public two years ago, mostly because of weakness at its older locations. MagiQuest is being introduced at one of the more successful, newer locations but it's easy to see how this can be a big winner if gamers take to the challenges.
Players get to keep their wands. They can also accessorize them. More importantly, every game is different, so the urge for players to play again with their decked-out keepsake wands can spell return visits to a chain that can sorely use the business at its older results where occupancy rates and average nightly rates have been falling.
So wave those wands, kiddies. Let's see you if that can work some of that magic to turn a frog of a stock into a princely investment.
NetEase and Shanda are active Rule Breakers newsletter recommendations. Great Wolf Resorts was also a pick in the growth stock service until back-to-back quarterly disappointments earned it a sell recommendation.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz enjoys taking his family on coaster treks over the summer, but he did manage to visit four indoor waterparks last month. He owns shares in Great Wolf. T he Fool has a disclosure policy. Rick is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
