Hong Kong’s Keyestone Group plans Hello Kitty theme park in Hainan to tap family tourism market

Keyestone Group’s Hello Kitty theme park in Sanya is expected to cost US$620 million and is set to open in 2024

Keyestone has a licensing agreement to use Sanrio’s more than 400 characters, including My Melody and Gudetama, in the theme park

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A rendering of Keyestone Group’s planned Hello Kitty theme park in Sanya, Hainan. Photo: Handout

Published: 7:30am, 6 Jan 2021Updated: 12:35pm, 6 Jan 2021

A private developer from Hong Kong, eyeing a gap in the family tourism market in China’s southernmost Hainan province, plans to build the first branded theme park to cash in on the tropical island’s popularity as a domestic and international tourism destination.

Keyestone Group plans to build a Hello Kitty theme park there, the second in China after Anji in eastern Zhejiang province, which opened in 2015. The complex, spread over 52 acres (2.27 million square feet) in the provincial capital Sanya, will also include a 250-room luxury hotel, and is estimated to cost 4 billion yuan (US$620 million) when completed. Construction started last month and the park is set to open in the second half of 2024.

“We see a growing demand for family entertainment in China,” chief executive Jeffery Pun said. “We aim to build a theme park that will be one of the most Instagrammable places in China.”

Keyestone, which owns the Grand Hyatt Sanya Haitang Bay Resort and Spa among its assets in Hainan, signed a licensing agreement with a unit of Sanrio of Japan in July 2019, allowing it to use most of the Japanese company’s more than 400 trademark characters, including Hello Kitty, My Melody and Gudetama, in the theme park.

Jeffery Pun, CEO of Keyestone Group, says a theme park is feasible in Hainan, China. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

The amusement park market in China is getting increasingly crowded. Many theme parks have opened in recent years including the Shanghai Disneyland in 2016. A Universal theme park in Beijing is set to open in May while many others such as Six Flags and Legoland are in the works in other Chinese cities.

The domestic tourism boom along with the development of the animation industry have fanned an expansion of amusement parks in China, according to a recent report by Daxue Consulting, a Beijing-based market research company. China’s amusement parks market, which includes tickets, food and accommodation among others, exceeded 300 billion yuan in 2019, the report added.