No place to hide: companies turn to "escape rooms" as latest motivational gambit.

• Author: Logan, Rebecca
• Position: NCTREND: Office outing

In the world of corporate team building, there may be no escaping the escape room.

The entertainment genre--in which teams, often ranging from six to a dozen people, must solve puzzles in order to earn passage out of elaborately themed rooms--has been spreading across North Carolina at a rate of nearly one market per month.

Asheville's first escape room opened in September, with two competitors quickly following suit. Fayetteville, Jacksonville, New Bern and Wilmington all have escape rooms that have opened since October. Companies have just as quickly signed up their employees, paying about $20 to $30 per person, though many escape rooms arrange group discounts.

"When you work together all the time, conflicts do arise. So we thought it would be something we could do and just have fun," says Lindsey Otero, half of the husband-wife team that owns Otero Family, Cosmetic and Implant Dentistry in Wilmington. Their staff recently visited Cape Fear Escape Room, where participants choose from a time-travel themed room, a chemistry crime scene or a speakeasy. The group had 60 minutes to make its escape and managed just that, with seconds to spare.

"The main thing we were hoping for--and which we saw--was teamwork. Everyone definitely came together and did their part. Even the ones who are usually more reserved really got into it and solved some of the puzzles," Otero says.

As of early March, escaperoomdirectory.com listed 470 escape room sites in the U.S. This was triple the number operating in June, according to MarketWatch. Escape rooms caught on in Asia a few years ago and spread to Europe before making their way to American cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. By 2014, they had taken hold in markets like Charlotte and the Triangle, which now have several escape rooms between them. The businesses are a mix of franchise and independent operations.

"It's something new and different. And it's not a mindless activity," says Gayla Joeckel, an owner of Escape Room Fayetteville. "It's not like going to a movie theater where you go, sit together, then get up and leave. There can be an adrenaline rush. It's almost like playing a video game--but in real life."

Michael Sullivan was playing a video game when he first started thinking about opening an escape room. "Not everyone wants to get together to do...