Universal Studios Beijing Photo:CFP

 80 mega theme parks in Chinahosted over 7.57 million visitors in 2022 and the opening of 10 new mega theme parks lifted major theme park revenues to 15.35 billion yuan ($2.13 billion), recorded a year-on-year increase of 15.29 percent, according to a report released by the institute for theme park studies in China on Saturday.

The report focused on mega theme parks in China, including 80 of the country's 82 mega theme parks. Compared to last year, 10 new mega theme parks have been added to the report, most notably Universal Beijing Resort. The new openings have helped China's theme parks to achieve revenue growth despite a slight decline in visitor arrivals.

2022 was the toughest year for China's theme parks, after adding 10 new mega theme parks in the report, the number of visitors to mega theme parks in China still dropped 0.33 percent in 2022, said Lin Huanjie, head of the institute for theme park studies in China, parper.cn reported.

Among all the mega theme parks in China, Shanghai Disney Resort hosted the most visitors, while Universal Beijing Resort realized the highest revenue.

The number of theme parks in China is rising continuously, and most of the parks belong to certain theme park series. Among the 80 mega theme parks in the report, 24 of which belongs to Fantawild series, 8 of them are in the Happy Valley series, 7 in the Rongchuang series, and 5 in the Haichang series, accounting for 55 percent of the total number of mega theme parks in China, Lin was quoted as saying.

Theme parks in China are on a branding trend, forming more and more theme park chains, and creating more and more Chinese localized theme park IPs. The trend is also lifting revisit rates of theme parks in China, Lin said, reported paper.cn.

China is witnessing a booming tourism recovery, in the first three quarters of this year, the total number of domestic tourist arrivals reached 3.674 billion, increasing  1.58 billion compared to the same period in 2022, up 75.5 percent year-on-year.

China is expecting more mega theme parks. In Tongzhou, Beijing, the construction of two theme parks has been planned  north to the Beijing Universal Resort. The two parks are expected to have a total investment of 5.6 billion yuan, covering areas of over 210,000 square meters, Tongzhou Construction and Operation Group announced on October 21.