White Paper

Published March 2026

By Cederik Haverbeke

1. Introduction: The Measurement Gap

The immersive experience economy is growing. Theme parks, VR arcades, immersive theatre, experiential retail, mixed-reality attractions, and location-based entertainment venues are multiplying across every continent. Billions of euros in capital flow into these ventures annually.

Yet the industry lacks a shared unit of measurement.

Theme parks report attendance figures and revenue per guest. VR arcades track sessions per headset per day. Immersive theatre companies measure ticket revenue and press coverage. Museums count footfall and dwell time. Each vertical has invented its own metrics, none of which translate across segments.

The result is an industry where:

• Operators cannot benchmark against peers in adjacent segments
• Investors cannot compare opportunities across experience types
• Designers cannot quantify the efficiency of their creative choices
• Policymakers cannot assess the resource intensity of the sector they regulate

This white paper proposes a solution: a unit economics framework that applies universally across all immersive experience formats, anchored to a single physical quantity that every venue shares — energy.

2. Why Energy Is the Right Anchor Unit

Every immersive experience, regardless of its format, technology, or creative vision, consumes energy to deliver its product. The projectors consume electricity. The climate control system runs continuously. The compute infrastructure draws power. The lighting rigs, the sound systems, the haptic actuators, the motion platforms — all of them convert electrical energy into moments of human experience.

Energy has several properties that make it ideal as the anchor unit for experience economics:

Universality. Every venue consumes energy. From a 10 m² VR booth to a 50,000 m² theme park, energy consumption is present, measurable, and non-negotiable.

Measurability. Kilowatt-hours are metered in real time with commodity hardware. Unlike labour hours (which require timekeeping systems and exclude automation) or capital expenditure (which is periodic and accounting-dependent), energy consumption is a continuous, objective physical measurement.

Comparability. A kilowatt-hour in Tokyo is physically identical to a kilowatt-hour in Amsterdam. Currency fluctuates, labour costs vary by jurisdiction, but energy is a physical constant denominated in SI units.

Alignment with sustainability. The global economy is increasingly accountable for its energy consumption. Using kWh as the denominator naturally integrates sustainability considerations into experience economics — you cannot improve your NPS/kWh without either improving the experience or reducing energy consumption. Both are desirable.

Resistance to gaming. Venues can inflate guest counts through aggressive discounting. They can manipulate revenue figures through bundling. But energy consumption is metered and physical. It is difficult to game a kilowatt-hour.

3. Deriving NPS / kWh: Experience Efficiency

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a standardised measure of customer satisfaction, calculated as the percentage of promoters (score 9-10) minus the percentage of detractors (score 0-6) among surveyed customers. It ranges from -100 to +100.

The kilowatt-hour (kWh) measures the total energy consumed during the period in which the surveyed experiences were delivered.

NPS/kWh therefore measures: for each unit of energy consumed, how much net satisfaction was produced?

Measurement Protocol

1. Define the measurement period (e.g., one operating day, one week, one month)
2. Survey a representative sample of guests during this period to calculate NPS
3. Meter total energy consumption for the same period (all systems: HVAC, compute, lighting, AV, interactive technology, back-of-house)
4. Divide NPS by total kWh consumed

Interpretation

A venue scoring NPS +70 on 500 kWh per day has an Experience Efficiency of 0.14 NPS/kWh.

A venue scoring NPS +40 on 100 kWh per day has an Experience Efficiency of 0.40 NPS/kWh.

The second venue produces nearly three times more satisfaction per unit of energy. Its experience design is fundamentally more efficient — it achieves meaningful impact with fewer resources.

Diagnostic Value

Low NPS/kWh invites two questions:

1. Is the NPS too low? (The experience is underwhelming relative to its energy footprint — improve the creative design.)
2. Is the kWh too high? (The experience is energy-inefficient — optimise systems, reduce waste, or right-size the technology.)

Often the answer is both. NPS/kWh makes the relationship visible.

4. Deriving € / kWh: Commercial Efficiency

Revenue (€) encompasses all income directly attributable to experience delivery during the measurement period: tickets, merchandise, food and beverage, sponsorship, licensing, and ancillary revenue streams.

€/kWh therefore measures: for each unit of energy consumed, how much revenue was generated?

Measurement Protocol

1. Define the measurement period (same as for NPS/kWh)
2. Calculate total attributable revenue for the period
3. Meter total energy consumption for the same period
4. Divide revenue by total kWh consumed

Interpretation

A venue generating €15,000 per day on 500 kWh has a Commercial Efficiency of €30/kWh.

A venue generating €3,000 per day on 200 kWh has a Commercial Efficiency of €15/kWh.

The first venue converts energy to revenue twice as effectively. Its pricing, throughput, and commercial model are better aligned with its energy consumption.

Diagnostic Value

Low €/kWh invites three questions:

1. Is pricing too low for the energy cost of delivery?
2. Is throughput too low — are there empty seats or idle capacity during energy-consuming hours?
3. Is the energy infrastructure oversized for the commercial model?

High €/kWh can also be a warning signal: if Commercial Efficiency is high but Experience Efficiency is low, the venue is extracting maximum revenue from an experience that guests do not love. This is commercially fragile — it depends on novelty, location advantage, or lack of competition, all of which erode over time.

5. The Role of m² as Scale Multiplier

Immersive experiences are inherently spatial. Unlike digital products (which are dimensionless) or traditional services (which scale with headcount), immersive experiences scale with physical space.

A 4 m² VR booth and a 40,000 m² theme park attraction both consume energy and produce experience, but they operate in fundamentally different regimes. Comparing their NPS/kWh or €/kWh without accounting for spatial scale would be misleading.

Why m² Is a Multiplier, Not a Denominator

Space could be placed in the denominator (yielding metrics per square metre). But in the context of immersive experiences, space is not consumed — it is leveraged. A larger venue does not use up space the way it uses up energy. Space enables simultaneous capacity, environmental richness, and journey design.

Therefore, m² functions as a multiplier: it amplifies the efficiency metrics to reflect the scale at which efficiency is achieved.

Measurement

Physical footprint is measured as the total conditioned floor area dedicated to experience delivery, including guest-facing spaces, staging areas, and technical spaces directly supporting the experience. It excludes administrative offices, external parking, and non-experience retail.

6. The Master Metrics

Combining the three base measurements produces two master metrics:

Commercial Yield captures the total commercial productivity of an immersive experience venue: how much revenue it generates per unit of energy, amplified by the scale at which it operates.

Experience Yield captures the total experiential productivity: how much satisfaction it produces per unit of energy, amplified by scale.

Why Two Master Metrics

A single master metric would force a trade-off between commercial and experiential performance. But the most important diagnostic insight comes from comparing the two:

• A venue with high Commercial Yield but low Experience Yield is extracting revenue without delivering commensurate satisfaction — a fragile position.
• A venue with high Experience Yield but low Commercial Yield is delivering excellent experiences that it fails to monetise — a sustainability risk.
• A venue with both yields high has found the sweet spot: it delivers powerful experiences and captures proportional commercial value.

The two-metric approach preserves this diagnostic power.

7. Diagnostic Applications: Four Scenarios

8. Applications

For Venue Operators

The framework provides operational KPIs that connect experience design decisions to energy and commercial outcomes. Operators can:

• Track NPS/kWh and €/kWh over time to detect efficiency trends
• Benchmark against peers within and across segments
• Justify capital expenditure on energy-efficient systems by quantifying their impact on both master metrics
• Identify underperforming zones within a venue by metering energy at the zone level

For Experience Designers

Designers gain a quantitative feedback loop on their creative decisions:

• Does adding a new interactive element increase NPS enough to justify its energy cost?
• Can the same emotional impact be achieved with a lower-energy technology choice?
• How does spatial layout affect the m² multiplier — does spreading an experience across more space improve or dilute the yields?

For Investors

The master metrics provide a standardised basis for investment analysis across immersive experience ventures:

• Compare a VR arcade investment to a theme park investment on the same axes
• Assess whether a venue’s commercial model is sustainable (high €/kWh) or fragile (high €/kWh but low NPS/kWh)
• Model the impact of scaling (increasing m²) on portfolio yields
• Evaluate technology upgrade proposals by their projected impact on efficiency metrics

For Policymakers

As immersive experiences become a larger part of urban economies, policymakers need tools to assess the sector:

• Evaluate the energy intensity of experience-economy developments in planning decisions
• Set benchmarks for energy efficiency in entertainment and cultural venues
• Design incentive programs that reward high NPS/kWh (socially valuable, energy-efficient experiences)
• Compare the resource efficiency of immersive experiences against other forms of entertainment and culture

9. Conclusion: A Call for Industry Adoption

The immersive experience economy needs a shared language. Not a reporting standard imposed from above, but a set of metrics that emerge naturally from the physics of what the industry does: convert energy and space into human experience.

The three metrics proposed here — NPS/kWh, €/kWh, and m² — are simple, measurable, and physically grounded. Their derived master metrics — €·m²/kWh and NPS·m²/kWh — provide a complete diagnostic picture that applies to any immersive experience format, at any scale, in any geography.

This framework does not replace existing operational metrics. Attendance, dwell time, per-cap spend, and occupancy rates remain useful for day-to-day management. But they cannot serve as a common language across the industry. The Immersive Experience Economy framework can.

The invitation is open: measure your NPS/kWh, calculate your €/kWh, multiply by your m², and see where you stand. Then share the results — so the industry can begin building the benchmarks it desperately needs.

10. About the Author

Cederik Haverbeke is an entrepreneur and builder in the immersive experience space. He is the founder of an XR Venture Studio, Managing Director of XR Valley VZW, and Vice President and Treasurer of UnitedXR Europe.

The Immersive Experience Economy framework emerges from a decade of building, funding, and governing immersive experience ventures across Europe — and from the persistent frustration of having no shared metrics to evaluate them.

Contact and further information: cederik.com

White Paper v1.0 — March 2026
PDF version coming soon.