All of this is discretionary spend though. There's no need to buy food at the zoo (who'd want to face the queues?), a picnic would suffice. I'd also imagine that children from the poorest families are used to not having significant "bolt-ons" to a main treat (of going to the zoo). Let's have some perspective here -a few non-zoological attractions no more makes a zoo a theme park than a handful of domestics makes it a farm park. To comfortably fund future expansion, improvements and donations to conservation. Even if they're not planning anything in the near future it doesn't hurt to make loads of money now and have a buffer (for periods of poor weather, closures due to foot and mouth, general dips in visitors for whatever reason). Imagine where London Zoo might have been if it had followed this credo.
I refer you to the question I asked re the gift shop. Is there anything in there to interest someone with a serious interest in zoology, conservation or ecology? There used to be.
Unfortunately, I suspect people with a serious interest in these fields make up a small minority of the zoo's visitors, and an even smaller fraction of those who are likely to spend the most in gift shops (i.e. families). I'd put what's sold in the gift shop down to profitability rather than any underlying ideology.
I think there may be a tiny clue in the phrase 'gift shop' But there are still a few such items - if you define your terms very broadly. Some of my family have been lucky (or unlucky) enough to get some fair-trade decorative items, made of recycled materials, from the Islands Gift Shop for Xmas in the past few years. As I have said before, 20 years ago zoo gift shops were always worth a visit to see if they had any interesting books, but Amazon has destroyed that market. Likewise who send or receives postcards now? Although I did spot a small selection of Chester Zoo postcards in the former Fountains Gift Shop, which has been re-themed along Malagasy lines; but they were rather expensive at £1 each if I remember correctly (Note to Pertinax: get in touch if you'd like some ).
I still trawl the giftshops for interesting(to me) postcards whenever I zoo visit, though I'm seeing less and less these days, at least in many zoos. And yes, price has gone up too. Tend to buy off the websites nowadays. My main interest is in earlier, rather than current ones though...
All I can say is that in the past I've bought many interesting and worthwhile books at Chester Zoo. In recent years I generally don't even bother going in. (Though I did have a walk round on Wednesday) Not suggesting it would be a huge moneyspinner, but it might just encourage a visitor to take a deeper interest in the subject, which is surely part of the zoo's purpose.
Part of the problem is less with zoo shops, and more with shops in general - an awful lot of people who see a good book in a shop go straight on their phone, find it 20-30% cheaper online and make a note to order later. I increasingly suspect the few high street book shops we do have left are mostly sustained by coffee shops and last-minute buying. Applied to the Chester situation, all that leaves the zoo with is a lot of dead stock and an unquantifiable warm glow. It's a case of whether for latter justifies the former, and it would be hard to argue that in a stock control meeting for what is after all a commercial operation in a way that the Education and animal teams aren't. Places like the WWT centres still have a very good range of natural history books - but as much as they present as family attractions I feel confident in asserting that they have a different visitor profile in terms of book-buying and fundamental interest in the subject to Chester! I wonder if there's scope for a deal with one of the online booksellers to keep display copies and have an online order point for a cut of the sales? Might be an interesting idea. The thing that really gets me is the continuing lack of guide book - that is something that will readily sell in volumes and has the capacity to achieve much of the same purpose.
I agree about the guide book. I also think that a 'Secret Life of the Zoo' tie-in book, telling the stories of some of the animals featured in the TV series but perhaps digging a little deeper, would be very popular with visitors and be something that wouldn't get stuck on the shelves for long. Actually, I do think the zoo misses a trick by milking the TV show more with merchandise! It would certainly be nice to see a better balance of stock in the shop. I haven't been for a while (hoping to change that soon) but was genuinely shocked on my last visit how poor the gift shop was. If you took soft toys out of the equation it felt like a whole lot of nothing!
I definitely think they could capitalise more on the tv show with merch - and some of it could even be educational (gasp!). I find most zoo giftshops to be full of tat because let's be honest - that is where the sweet spot is between what a 6 year old wants and what a parent is willing to pay for. Having said that, we collect magnets from everywhere we visit so I can't complain too much about the tat.
The profits made from items sold in the gift shops are supposed to support the underlying ideology... if there is one.
Talking to someone in a zoo gift shop recently, I got the impression that an outside book seller turns up with a selection of books that they deem appropriate and leave them on a sale or return basis. You may have come across these people leaving booked in receptions of offices and explained how a zoo could be selling books produced for the Born Free Foundation.
The zoo have announced via social media the birth of a Silvery Gibbon, this is the second to be born at the zoo but the first conceived at Chester itself.
The first youngster is still there, the second birth must have not survived. Gibbons live in family groups, they wont become independent until 6-8 years old when they would move on. So in the wild you would see adult pairs and youngsters in tow, but in captivity the gap between births appears to be shorter.
The latest series of Secret Life of the Zoo starts on Wednesday 31st October. 8pm and Channel 4 again
Unfortunatley it appears Nandita and Aayu the young elephants have both been tested positive for EEHV... Fighting EEHV
