Dear Potential Partner and Investor,
Red Planet Expeditions, Inc. (RPE) creates one-of-a-kind vacations for affluent adventure
travelers using themes of the Future and Space Exploration as key draws to our expeditions. We
provide unique, immersive, and learning adventure-experiences.
RPE will build, market, and license the world’s first Mars-themed adventure resort that will
authentically simulate what it would be like to be on an expedition on Mars in the year 2035.
We at RPE realize this is not the usual investment opportunity that most investors see come across their desk. To counter, our business is actually quite simple. Essentially, we are a developer of small, luxury, high-tech resorts that use a particular theme to attract our customers. We are the equivalent of a Dude Ranch set on Mars. Our business is similarly modeled after expedition cruises to exotic locations such as Antarctica which had 14,000 visitors in 2004, and is projecting 20,000 visitors for 2005.
We will open our first resort in late 2007 on a 120-acre desert site between Los Angeles and Las
Vegas. Our first theme is Mars — The Red Planet — which is easily the most popular and recognizable space theme and location with the world public. In 2004, the NASA Mars twin rovers “Spirit” and “Opportunity” generated large international media interest producing an astounding 11 billion hits on the NASA web portals, a record for any web site of any type.
We are catering to the growing $1 billion+ a year adventure travel industry — people who want to
do something totally different on their vacations and have the money to do so. Our SimNaut™
(simulated astronaut) guests will be able to totally immerse themselves in an exciting and fun
expedition on Mars for up to a week.
Our business strategy is leveraging 3 key emerging rends:
- Adventure Tourism as the travel industry’s fastest growing segment.
- The birth of the Space Tourism industry with Burt Rutan and Paul Allen’s $10 million Ansari X Prize victory and subsequent Virgin Galactic partnership for suborbital spacecraft.
- The use of Space Tourism simulations as the bridge between the decade of early test pilot missions
and routine orbital vacations for tourists.
Our business model is simple but sound:
- We can accommodate 1,300 guests per year and charge $1,000 per day for our 3- to 7-day experience.
- We are already receiving deposit and we expect to be sold out for our first 6 months of operation
in advance of opening.
- We receive sponsorship revenues for naming rights and co-marketing opportunities.
- We will host 250,000 day-visitors per year at $23.00 per person (admissions, concessions, and
merchandise) who will come to our 18,000 sq. ft Visitors Center and Mars Hall of Fame, and to view
our SimNauts™ live and in action.
- Our Southern California location is ideally situated right on the I-15 where over 50 million
people travel each year between Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
These are not new business models, only the environment is new. The experience is unique, like no other resort in the world. Our team is special, made up of leading Mars Scientists, Space Shuttle Astronauts, Futurists, authors, and experts in space tourism. We have established relationships with scientific, space, and adventure tourism organizations with a combined membership of over 1 million people, which will jump-start our expeditions from the beginning. Our timing is impeccable, as space tourism simulations will emerge as the most lucrative way for advancing the actual space tourism industry, while science and engineering work to reduce product failure and insure safety.
Simulations are a necessary component to stimulating interest in a new industry, by providing the mainstream consumer a risk-free, reasonably priced taste of what, in reality, is a very exclusive, costly, and possibly dangerous experience.
With raising $8.1 million in investments we will be able to fund construction costs ($5.5 million using 20 of the 120 acres), marketing ($1.0 million), and operational costs ($1.6 million), which will bring us to the end of 2007. We can organically grow the business to expand capacity, generating about $20 million in revenue for each 20-acre parcel used while also diversifying income streams into licensing our themed entertainment and resort concepts worldwide.
We will prove to you that although the theme is futuristic, the business can succeed today. We hope our plan will provoke your thoughts and imagination to new heights, and we welcome skeptical questions and the opportunity to prove to you that this business can be funded inexpensively while producing a ROI of 10x or more within 3 to 5 years.
You are at the entry point of a brand new industry in Space Tourism. While scientists and engineers figure out how to get us to “Moon, Mars, and Beyond,” our Mars Expedition Base and Resort will be generating revenue and providing our SimNauts with a unique adventure vacation they will want to have again and again.
Do you want to go? |