Sometimes a leopard can change its spots

FUTURE PROOF: Fota Wildlife Park:CHEETAHS, KANGAROOS, wallabies and ring-tailed lemurs – it's not every business that counts these in its inventory. But then Fota Wildlife Park isn't just any business.

A not-for-profit organisation, Fota opened its gates to the public in 1983 – and you’d be hard pressed to find a 40-year-old in the Munster region who hasn’t been there on a school tour.

Head of marketing Stephen Ryan remembers 2007 as a highlight. “It was a record year. There was a lot of buzz around the park. We had introduced the cheetah run – they run at 80 miles an hour chasing their food. They need to be kept physically fit and not just given food – so that was a huge attraction.”

By 2008 however, the recession had started to bite. “There was a big lull, the business dropped by about 20 per cent that year,” he recalls.

“We felt we didn’t have as many tourists as we should have, but definitely the locals started to feel the pinch too. Maybe they started saying to themselves ‘we’ve been there before plenty of times; that’s one thing we can do without’.”

The park’s first course of action was to reconnect with the locals, surveying them to ask what would lure them back.

“The people who came said they loved the walks, the animals and the freedom. If they had kids, they felt it was a safe environment. The people who weren’t coming said they felt the park hadn’t changed – there was nothing new, nothing exciting – so we felt we had to change the message.”

Rather than go down the discount route, Fota added more value to its offering with activities like African drumming, magic shows, Easter egg hunts and Mother’s Day fairs.

“You’re competing with cinemas and these indoor play areas,” says Ryan. “A lot of them would be cheaper, but they don’t have large animals to feed. We still had that cost base so we couldn’t really reduce our prices that much. We said ‘maybe if we invest more, we’ll get more out of it’, and it worked.”

In the summer of 2009, new staff were employed to do face painting, arts and crafts and story telling. “That proved a massive hit. It was every day for June, July and August but it was so popular we brought them in on weekends in September and October too.”

The park also invested in a facelift, going from two to five gates to reduce queues. It cost more than €4 million.

“It was a big undertaking because we did it all off our own bat with no subsidies from the Government . . . it was a risk but we were confident the numbers would increase again in 2009.”

A new shop, a second cafe, a new playground and new animal exhibits opening in August 2010 all helped to reinvigorate the park.

“Straight away there was a wow factor coming in. It was very much like what you’d see at a big attraction in America: a big wow factor,” says Ryan.

The investment paid off. The annual turnover of the park, nearly €5 million pre-recession, had dropped by 10 per cent in 2008 and 2009. However, following investment and targeted marketing campaigns, this trend reversed. Visitor numbers, which in 2008 had fallen to about 330,000, climbed to 377,000 in 2010 and to 390,000 in 2011. While at the end of 2008, the park’s membership was under 4,000 families, it’s now a healthy 5,300.

The park continues to hone its marketing strategy. With just 10 per cent of its visitors from overseas, Fota is now advertising at airports and hotels around the country. Having upped its value proposition, Ryan says the park decided to stop doing ‘two for one’ on-pack promotions with supermarkets.

“We felt we were actually eating into our own revenue by agreeing to promotional tools that we didn’t require anymore. Those promotions were helping the third party and not us.”

The park has also benefited from midweek and winter traffic brought to local hotels by Groupon and Living Social deals. Package deals with the hotels where entrance to the park is included are also driving numbers.

Led by mascot Larry the Lemur, Fota has also become more social media savvy, last month launching web content in Spanish, Italian, German, French and Chinese.

“We’re trying to tell a story on our website,“ says Ryan. “The park is more than just a fun day out: we’re also involved in conservation projects around the world. We want to show people that we are a non-profit organisation and we’re doing good in society as well.”

Fota’s 21,000 Facebook fans are proving great ambassadors too. “We’re trying to build a memory of the park on our own website, so now anytime someone puts up a picture on Flickr or a video on YouTube or Vimeo, or if they tweet about us, our website picks it up,” he says.

Plans are afoot to develop a further 27 acres in the park. Ryan says the plan is to “build Asia”.

“We are looking at animals that are very endangered from southeast Asia – Sumatran tigers, Indian rhino and Asiatic bears.”

While there is no guarantee of government assistance, he says the hope is to turn the sod on the project in 2013, the park’s 30th year. “We’re going to keep an ethos where you feel like you are walking with the animals, rather than there being a big fence.”