Bishop's Stortford Escape Rooms

In most of our towns, we are good friends with local competitors. 

Our team carefully monitor all local competitors and work in partnership, sharing leaflets and advance notice of game launches. 

In Harlow, 10 miles away by car is the brilliant Panic Rooms Harlow owned by the same team behind The Panic Rooms in Gravesend, Kent. We thoroughly recommend their rooms, both clever and innovative and run by a team who have a clear passion for escape games and highly regarded and respected across the Escape Room industry. 

In Bishop’s Stortford we are the only current Escape Room operator. 

The area can easily support more than one escape room company and, for a period, enjoyed seven escape game rooms across the two companies operating in the city. 

Know Escape’s Bishop’s Stortford Escape Rooms opened in 2018 and were the second escape room venue to open in Bishop’s Stortford; the first company to open was called ‘Vire’.

Vire opened six months ahead of our launch and had a mix of reviews and a prominent location in the middle of the high street. 

During Vire’s life, they rebranded three times, first as ‘Vire Escape Rooms’, then ‘Escape Stortford’ and finally as ‘Escape if you Dare’. 

Vire specialised in virtual reality and children’s parties adding Escape Rooms as a later opportunity and Vire staff would run more than one escape room game at once.

Sadly Vire failed to attract enough customers and fell into Administration in March 2022, closing all four branches within the area and making all staff redundant.

Why do Escape Rooms fail?

It’s essential to understand why some escape rooms fail, like Vire did, especially when they had such a fantastic location right in the heart of the town on the high street with hundreds of people walking past every hour.

You are reading this page because you are interested in an escape room franchise and are probably wondering what Vire was doing wrong so you can avoid the same mistakes yourself; in our experience, Vire could have improved the following four things:

1. game quality
2. build quality
3. customer service
4. marketing

As a franchise of Know Escape, we will guide you through the game to ensure quality and give guidance, help and advice with the builds. We will work with you to deliver exceptional customer service and ensure your marketing is suitable for your location.

The administrators have so far been unable to sell the Vire business as a going concern, and all branches are closed.

The Vire Tripadvisor remains online and gives a good overview of what the business was doing right and wrong; you can review it here: Vire Tripadvisor. Read all the reviews.  

We wish the former owners of Vire and team the very best on the next adventures, they were very nice people.

We never want to see a competitor struggle or go bust; In our industry, we rely on customers moving between escape room venues.