Make a profitable exhibit challenge

So profitability depends on a realistic species list?
Whatever the species list, an expensive-to-build exhibit complex (nocturnal house, hippos and indoor mangrove forests, etc.) is the same and the visitation is the same.
So where is the profitability? I don't see how these exhibits make money in any way that every other fantasy exhibit on Zoochat doesn't. Solar panels are great but reducing the energy load does not a profit make.

In short: Show Me The Money!

 

Remember, these thought experiments are being done by people outside of the zoo scene. (I am one of those outside of the zoo scene.) If I were actually designing exhibits, I wouldn’t be here posting designs here because it would be just like work and I wouldn’t be doing work during my spare time. Just as you say, ‘show me the money’, I’d say ‘pay me’ if you expected a fully drawn schematic and all the other details like you’d see on an exhibit’s profile on ZooLex. You wouldn’t do so since I’m unqualified to do the work that requires a large amount of effort from a team of experts.

So, if the people submitting in this thread are not inside the zoo scene, they’re going to be thinking about how a (non-representative) guest would go through the area as their basis, which would bias the cost and complexity upwards. I did this a fair amount too, where I drew upon successful exhibits such as my local zoo’s Russia’s Grizzly Coast as well as a small amount from the River’s Edge at Saint Louis. I also decided to think of exhibits with dimensions similar to accredited institutions by following posted designs on ZooLex and using the publicly available AZA animal care manuals. The designs on ZooLex are most likely not a representative sample of all zoo exhibits for a particular species, so there will be some bias (most likely upward) introduced using them. (I also cited the uncertainty at decisions that I included [the indoor mangrove forest] even after the trading off elephants, so it’s not as though I’m entirely unaware [although I may be pretty close] of what I’m proposing.) Is there more that could be done from an outsider in creating an exhibit series that is successful to an insider, sure, but I’d say using ZooLex and the AZA animal care manuals (the constraints to maximizing profit) is a step closer in the directions of profitability that a thread like this encourages.

As a result of the who is on ZooChat and the incentive incompatibility for exhibit-design insiders to contribute for Internet praise, these ideas are going to be a pretty sizeable epsilon away from what an insider knows is profitable. Of course, if profit was the sole goal, I assume it’d be easiest to set up a roadside zoo, pay employees terrible wages, care for the animals poorly, and charge people a fair amount of money to hold a sedated tiger cub. However, I don’t think anyone on ZooChat would want to submit that.

Those are my thoughts.

 

@Sotolo I do see that. But @TheEthiopianWolf03 presented what sounded like a unique Zoochat challenge. I am trying to nudge members to address that challenge as best they can. What ideas will people come up with? What insights will they have?
Writing a narrative of a fascinating zoo exhibit complex is being done on dozens of threads here. This one was presented with a twist.
So challenge yourself? What would be a profitable exhibit? What do you think that phrase means and how will you imagine such an exhibit?
I don't believe Zoolex is looking to publish your results

 

I think I misinterpreted your initial comments to be a bit more dismissive than you intended. I was angling my submission as a alternate-world River's Edge, so I was a little puzzled when you mentioned that hippos were a bit out there when Saint Louis does have hippos. That's mostly on me for not making that connection as explicit.

I imagine that many of the exhibits on Zoolex are 'profitable' for the zoo which I interpreted as getting people to come to the zoo and having a large proportion of those who come to the zoo spend a reasonable amount of time at the exhibit. If there's a better interpretation of profitability for zoos (since, aside from the Bronx's Gorilla Forest, people are not paying to go to one exhibit), I'd be happy to know.

Hopefully that clears things up on my end.

 

I can't deny I am not one to sugar coat my statements. But that can misdirect people, I know

A decent exhibit (with great marketing) will give a zoo an attendance bump for a season. Sometimes a bit longer. It usually is either a charismatic animal new to the facility (We have elephants!), a terrific immersive experience (Explore the southeast Asia forest and its wonders!), or an interactive experience (Swim with the stingrays!). To be profitable it probably has a new much needed restaurant, souvenir shop, etc. (In addition to time spent at an exhibit the zoo needs visitors to spend more money at the zoo) Even so, if one counts the cost of the exhibit then one wonders how long it takes to be profitable (in an investment sense). But is it fair to evaluate zoo exhibits on ROI alone?
If the zoo is only partially developed and the new exhibit expands the zoo then the attendance bump will be more durable than if one poor exhibit is replaced with a decent exhibit.
So if we are to accept this challenge we might think about these issues and see where that thinking leaves us.
Since so many Zoochatters want to own or run or work in zoos in their dream job this is really a great exercise.

 

One time I spoke to a zoo director who said that the most "profitable" enclosure in their entire zoo was the rabbit enclosure. It was designed and build by the zoo itself from mainly surplus materials in a few days, the rabbits were all local adoptions, the food was very cheap and the care took little time from the keepers (if not done by the volunteers). However, it was extremely popular with children who just loved to pet the rabbits. The cost:benefit ratio was, to his estimation, the best of all the zoo's enclosures.

Yet if you build a zoo with only this type of enclosure I doubt it will do very well. A zoo is more than the sum of its parts, and that makes it difficult to really know how "profitable" one single exhibit is. The rabbit enclosure may well have the best cost:benefit ratio, but without the bears and camels and monkeys in the rest of the zoo, no-one would pay to see it.

 

I would like a theme

 

I want to have a theme, too. Why not? And Zooplantman as a critic.

 

So while I have been giving out themes and such I have been trying to read into trends that new exhibits have and I am currently trying to grasp what makes a exhibit profitable. Realistically while I think many of these concepts are well thought out I don't have a full conceptual grasp on what "profitable" means to a zoo other than my interpretation which is an exhibit that has the following:

1.) Recognizable animals (That are also profitable through plushies, toys, etc)
2.) Interactive exhibits (Marketed towards kids that utilize the senses like touch and hearing)
3.) Some other aspects to it that make it fun for families (Playground structures, etc)


So when I imagine a profitable exhibit I think of California Trail at Oakland zoo. There aren't many animals and the majority of the animals chosen for the exhibit are easily recognizable (Bears, Wolves, Jaguar) and even with the inclusion of an oddity (Californian condor) the exhibit maintains a strict conservation method that is expressed through interactive exhibits like the California Conservation Habitarium or the signage that lets you measure your arm span in comparison to a condor. With the added inclusion of the playground structure, gondola system, giant restaurant, and campsite I think every element in this exhibit is the reason why Oakland zoo saw a rise of attendance that rivaled every year prior to the opening of the exhibit. That is the kind of concept I would consider profitable. In any case I did this to have many zoochaters who love zoos to try to make their own exhibit that would be profitable I give themes, the zoo's association, and a rule set to limit the crazy ideas that I know many zoochatters have to reflect on the limitations many other zoos have when trying to make profitable exhibits. Those were my thoughts when making this thread.

 

If I may chip in with my understanding of what makes a profitable exhibit to me - I would take it literaly. Each exhibit complex presented should include a very brief calculation of costs and revenues with at least slight profit at the end. Under costs I would put annual running costs (expected wages, food, electricity, water, maintenance and depreciation equal to 1/20 of construction costs). Under revenue an expected boost of footfall multiplied by average ticket price, plus corresponding revenue from food and souvenirs or adoptions. How about that?

 

I would like to give this a try

 

Interesting concepts! @ThatOneZooGuy your next theme is for a zoo in EAZA that wants an exhibit with the theme of "Urbanization" and its affects on the wildlife of Europe. This might be a bit of a hard one but I'll let you figure out how to make this work. @Gibbon05 your next theme is a AZA zoo with a theme of "Coastal wildlife" and the message of pollution.

Your zoo is a ZAA zoo with a focus on the "Forests of Australia". Try to incorporate the risks these forest face.

Your zoo is a CAZA zoo with the theme of "Northern Asia". I know pretty simple but try to create a message with your exhibit.

Don't forget with all that as been recently discussed, try to incorporate concepts that make the exhibit profitable.

 

Hmm, interesting challenge. I'll give this a go.

 

Here it is. Not surprise what the key animal is. I also thought about polar bears, but this is native animal in Canada..

Siberian Forests
The exhibit shows forest of Siberia, the worlds largest continuous forest, and teaches of forest conservation and predator protection.

Entrance and visitor path
The entrance is through a wooden gate with beautiful Russian ornamental woodwork. The exhibit area is existing forest and preserves the forest feeling. Exhibits are surrounded by simple, unobtrusive chainlink fence partially hidden by with fast growing shrubs planted in front.

Along the visitor path, dead logs and tree stumps are positioned and East Asian shrubs and trees are planted. Education items are positioned along the walkway. They include animal footprints pressed in concrete, asking visitors to guess the species. A storage hut is built on tree trunk, which is traditional Siberian way to protect supplies from bears. On one tree there is a traditional Russian beehive carved high up in a dead standing tree. There are also camera traps, a look-into fake leopard den and a live tiger trap used by researchers.

Enclosure 1.
The exhibits are used by siberian tigers, dhole and amur leopards in rotation. Leopards can use only the two mesh-covered exhibits. First is the biggest, forest exhibit with a dry moat, which uses an existing gully. It is up to 1 hectare in size. The background information tells, among others, that the dhole is the only wild carnivore able to chase tiger off its kill.

Owl aviary
A large aviary with old trees and a pool hosts Blakiston's fish owls. This species is especially worth bringing to Western collections. There is a breeding program in Japan. It is not only attractive and endangered owl, but will forever require an insurance population due to destruction of forests in the Far East. If sourcing the owls is impossible, the aviary can host Steller's sea eagles or eurasian eagle owls.

Enclosure 2.
The second exhibit is covered viewed through glass viewing windows. It has a water pool, allowing underwater view of the tigers if they use the area and choose to swim. There is a broad wire tunnel going over the visitor path which cats can enter. There is a heated pad which encourages big cats to rest directly over the visitor path.

Enclosure 3.
The third carnivore exhibit is also netted. It is viewed from a hut with information on the predator research. The hut extends into the exhibit and has partially glass ceiling. The nearby panel is heated, which encourages predators to sit on the roof. The look at a tiger overhead almost within touching distance is probably the last thing which zoo world did not yet do about tigers. There are fake poacher's traps hidden between trees near the path, and visitors re asked to spot them. Some fake snares are in the tiger exhibit, so visitors can see the tiger almost walking into the trap.

Holding building
Visitors can look into the tiger holding building through the glass. There is a detailed information how zoos care for the tigers. For many people, the zoo by itself is also interesting. There is also a family tree of all carnivores in the exhibit, tracing their ancestors to the wild.

Enclosure 4. and animal demonstration
Nearby, the fourth small exhibit has an amphitheater and is used for presentations and medical training of carnivores. It includes a feeding pole for tigers and leopards to climb. Another leaning tree trunk illustrates the surprising agility and climbing skills of dhole. There is also a metal line pulled over the exhibit, which lets dhole or tigers chase a moving target.
One special event is tug-of-war between children and a tiger. It involves pulling a rope going between the visitor area and the animal area. A pulley system prevents the rope from being pulled too fast. The 'prize' is a cardboard bag with dry food or a whole dead chicken, to avoid the situation that the tiger ingests the rope.
I suspect that the dholes will be more popular than the cats, due to their general activity and sociability.

The restaurant
There is a restaurant themed as East Russia. It serves Russian and Chinese cuisine. It has a terrace overlooking a tiger exhibit, and visitors can also see amphitheatre presentation on the other side of the complex.

The stream aviary near the restaurant
A glass wall opens from the restaurant into an aviary. It shows a rocky forest stream with a small waterfall and split-view above and underwater. It is carefully designed to be beautiful, with a quality of a Japanese garden architecture. It hosts mandarin ducks, scaly-sided mergansers and endangered Amur sturgeon. It illustrates importance of forests for water quality. The sturgeon can be stocked from hatcheries in China or Russia.

Children playground
There is children playground focusing on protecting ancient forests. The children can climb and slide in giant, modeled tree trunks and walk on ropes between trees in a rope park. In the tree trunks are hollows with models of animals which require old trees, like a bear in her den, martens, woodpeckers, owls, mergansers and mandarin ducks. Many other animal pictures and wood sculptures illustrate lives of tigers and other animals without the use of words. A mesh tunnel extends over a visitor path, and lets children climb like big cats climbed in their own tunnel. There is also a number of underground tunnels and passages in rotten trees. They let children go like a dhole or a chipmunk into an underground tunnel which opens in several glass domes and viewing windows inside the tiger exhibit.
Specific topics are illustrated:
*old trees as key resource – a mock nest of Steller's sea eagle on top of a climbing tower. A row of planted and existing trees: from young sapling through a 20, 40, 60 and 200 year old tree trunk; illustrating that planting a young tree in place of an old tree is not enough.
*old hollow trees as an important habitat – treehouse
*dead timber as key habitat element – crawl over old tree logs, open little doors to see models of small animals living in dead wood.
*habitat corridors, ecological corridors – rope walk between trees
*spreading seeds – playing by sliding on a hook attached to the rope
*forests and preservation of freshwater – a drinking water fountain like an a little forest spring
*umbrella species – look into tiger exhibit through the window

Species:
Amur sturgeon
mandarin duck
scaly-sided merganser
Blakiston's fish owl / Steller's sea eagle
amur leopard
siberian tiger
dhole
All species are endangered except the mandarin duck, which is cheap to maintain and very attractive. All illustrate forest protection in some way (sturgeon, merganser, owl, leopard, tiger) or predator protection.

Reasons why the exhibit should be profitable:
The place uses the existing forest and requires no heated animal building or large pools or rocks. There is a number of attractions: children playground, carnivore demonstrations, a hut with tigers resting on a glass roof, walk-over wire tunnels which big cats can enter. There is a restaurant which can be accessed from outside the zoo and can be rented for events.

 

The Sea of Life

A brand-new expansion to a top aquarium, this exhibit features things for the kids as well as an overlaid deep conservation message. Let's begin our journey. We exit the main aquarium building into an outdoor section. This area features two large exhibits along with a restaurant and a wet play area. As we begin, two mock rock walls run alongside the pathway, blocking anything else from view. These walls are ‘decorated’ with fishing lines, ropes and other objects, thus beginning the pollution theme. We round the corner and an open plaza comes into view. At the centre is a large cafe with sea views. To the right of this is the ‘Splash Zone’ a large wet play area with fountains, slides and more. The first of the two exhibits here is shaped like a circle, enclosed by a rock border. Visitors can see several Harbour Seals here. The majority of the exhibit is a large, deep pool with small land areas consisting of rocky outcrops. Visitors can view the exhibit from above and walk down a ramp to a large underwater viewing window. The back of the exhibit is made up of a large mock rock wall. On this wall is a half destroyed boat, half of the top is missing and the skeleton is visible. There is a fishing net hanging from the boat (not quite touching the water as not to harm the animals).


The next exhibit is half outdoors and half indoors. The outdoors section is almost exactly the same as the seal’s exhibit, however it is a bit larger. This exhibit holds Californian Sea Lions. The indoor section of this exhibit is even larger than the outdoor section. It is a large semi-circle up against the wall that connects the two sections. The round edge of the circle is a complete, uninterrupted curved glass panel that allows an amazing view into the pool. The majority of this section is one large pool, with a small rocky land section on the back wall. The two sections are connected by two holes in the wall to each side of the land section. Visitors can sit on a large amphitheatre-style seating area and see over the whole exhibit. There are daily shows that take place here. The lighting around this area is bright blue to give an authentic look. To the right of the sea lion exhibit is another pool, only separated by a low and thin rocky wall so visitors can see both pools at the same time. Nothing lives here, it is used as a static display. There is a sandy beach section which is littered with lots of plastic and rubbish as well several oil barrels, some of them upturned. The water section in this display is stained black to look like there has been an oil spill. Signs on the back edge of the path give information about the dangers of oil spills for animals. On these signs are several flaps that have a warning sign on the front. If visitors open these flaps, there are pictures of animals that have been trapped in oil spills.


To the right side of this display is another exhibit. This one, again, is only separated from the ‘oil spill’ by a low rocky wall. This exhibit has a large pool with a very small land section. Here lives a pair of Sea Otters. Their exhibit can be viewed via a low glass panel with above and underwater viewing. The next area includes another static display. It is a tall rocky wall up against the wall of the building. On this wall are loads of plastic items and rubbish. A sign explains that all of this was found in the sea around the aquarium. There is a similar setup to the oil spill pictures, this time with pictures of animals trapped in plastic behind the flaps. Next the path takes you to a seating area with small stools in front of a large TV screen that plays a looped cartoon video for kids about pollution in the sea.


The path continues on and it comes to a small open topped tank for Epaulette Sharks and Whitespotted Bamboo Sharks.


The next area is a large sandy beach with a deep pool for a large colony of Humboldt Penguins. Their exhibit can be viewed by a huge floor-to-ceiling glass window that provides above and underwater viewing. At the back of their exhibit, on the beach, is an overturned boat with several holes in its hull that the penguins can walk into. The idea is that the penguins will nest in there, and if they do, there is a camera in each one. These cameras feed a live video to several screens in the visitor area. There is more seating here for the visitors to sit and watch the penguins.


The final exhibit is a touch pool for Cownose Rays along with other smaller rays and fish. Their pool is separated by the same low barrier from another pool. This pool is full to the brim with plastic and rubbish, so much so you can hardly see the water. Finally as you exit this exhibit, there is a gift shop where you can purchase soft toys of the animals found here such as the penguins, sea lions and otters.

 

@TheEthiopianWolf03 ??

 

Your zoo is located in France as a member of EAZA. The zoo wants to do an exhibit that revolved around it's partnership with the Sahara Conservation Fund to educate people of the work they do.

Your next zoo is an AZA zoo that wants to build a South American exhibit with a message of wildlife trafficking.

Sorry for the delay. Your next zoo is a ZAA zoo that wants a exhibit dedicated to African wildlife. Nothing crazy but create a conservation message out of it and try not to do the typical tropes seen with many other African exhibits. Be creative.

 

Forests Of The Land Down Under
This is a 2 acre complex focusing on the forests of Australia.
New Guinea
The first section visitors encounter is New Guinea.
This part has two species.
As visitors walk along an elevated boardwalk,they are surrounded by nothing but plants.
The first exhibit you see is 5,000 square feet and has a large tree at the center.
It contains Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroos.
Next is a large,lush flight cage.
It contains several Reggina's Birds Of Paradise.
Australia
The largest section is Australia.
The first thing visitors see is an indoor exhibit that connects to a larger outdoor habitat making for a total of 10,000 square feet.
It contains Koalas.
If you look at the mural at the back of the indoor habitat,you will see fire creeping up.
This is ment to replicate the fires that pose a threat to these forests.
Next is a 5,000 square foot habitat that is netted and has a termite mound.
It contains a Short-Beaked Echidna.
The exhibit has some fallen trees to replicate deforestation that also poses a threat to these forests.
Next is a nocturnal building with two displays.
Both are meshed because their residents are birds.
One exhibit has perches while the other is more ground themed.
The first exhibit is the one with the perches and contains a Tawny Frogmouth while the ground themed one a North Island Kiwi.
Next is an exhibit similar to the Echidna's but slightly larger and no termite mound.
It contains Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombats.
The next habitat is the same as the wombat's but this time a Numbat.
Tasmania
The final section,Tasmania,is the smallest and only has one exhibit.
The exhibit is 10,000 square feet,has a den,and has lots of toys.
It contains a Tasmanian Devil.
Once you leave the area,you are met with the ever so common lorikeet aviary containing Rainbow Lorikeets.

Next theme please

 

I have not forgotten this thread! The exhibit will be up sometime this week when I have the time.