Trust Chair reportConnecting with our Visitors
Visitors
More than ever, visitors to Wellington Zoo are voting with their feet. Over 182,000 visitors supported their Zoo, our highest recorded visitation ever. We are delighted that our visitor numbers continue to grow with 4,000 more visitors than last year coming to the Zoo. Over 82,000 of our visitors are children and young people and fifty six percent of our visitors come from Wellington city. Eight percent of Zoo visitors in the last year were international tourists.
Please view our monthly admissions chart.
Zoo Crew
The Trust now has over 2,000 Wellington Zoo Crew members, up from just over 1,000 at the same time last year. Zoo Crew membership allows members to visit the Zoo as much as they like for one year and attend special events four times per year. Zoo Crew members accounted for 8% of visits to the Zoo last year.
We appreciate the continued support of our Zoo Crew members – amongst our strongest advocates – who continue to make an investment in Wellington Zoo’s development. The introduction this year of exclusive Zoo Crew events has been a great addition to the Zoo’s social calendar, and a fantastic way of thanking our most loyal supporters.
Encounters
At Wellington Zoo we pride ourselves on the opportunities our visitors have to get up close to our animals. Some visitors do this through a Close Encounter, while others may chance upon a blue tongue skink or cockatoo out with a Zoo guide when they are exploring the Zoo. Giving our visitors the chance to see, feel, smell and learn about the animals they share the planet with is a powerful way of connecting our visitors with our wildlife.
Around 800 Zoo visitors have experienced a Close Encounter with the red pandas, giraffes, cheetahs or big cats in the last year. This is less than last year, mainly due to staff changes and the unavailability of giraffes leading up to their big move. We are currently undertaking a review of all of our Close Encounters to ensure the experience is as good as it can be for all participants, Zoo staff and animals. In accordance with the Zoo’s Conservation Strategy, we will also be dedicating a proportion of money raised from each Close Encounter to the Wellington Zoo Conservation Fund.
Interacting with visitors
Successful visitor experience ensures that visitors have a meaningful, emotional and intellectual experience that is delivered in an engaging, fun, relevant and informal way. This year we developed a visitor experience strategy to link our visitors with nature through stories, experiences and interaction with staff and animals.
The easiest way to connect our visitors with the conservation and advocacy work we do at Wellington Zoo is for Zoo visitors to interact with our staff. In recognition of the importance of the interaction between staff and visitors we developed a training programme to enhance keeper and guide talks, and general communication with visitors.
One of the main aims of this programme was to integrate our key conservation messages in a fun and effective way, to empower our visitors to take action at home. Recent research revealed that 42% of respondents believed the Zoo’s top priority was educating visitors about animal conservation and 36% said its main goal was providing a fun family day out.
Wild Theatre
Offering intimate and unique experiences to our visitors has continued to be a major focus at the Zoo this year. The new Wild Theatre has become a visitor hub and every day during the summer holidays, and weekends during the rest of summer, there was something happening in the Wild Theatre. Whether it was face painting, playing games, exploring special zoo touch tables or getting up close to animals, everyone who came to the Wild Theatre during summer had a great experience. We have also hosted Christmas parties, business functions, book launches, school groups and Zoo visitors looking for a sheltered place to eat their lunch in the Wild Theatre.
During the refurbishment of the Twilight, we moved our popular Tahi the kiwi talk into the Wild Theatre. This proved a fantastic space for our visitors to learn about our special one-legged kiwi and what they can do to help kiwi in the wild, as we could accommodate a larger audience. In April, Tahi moved into his permanent home in the Twilight, but his daily appearances continue in the Wild Theatre drawing big crowds to learn about kiwi conservation.
Over summer, visitors were also greeted around the Zoo by our guides with contact animals. Blue tongue skinks, tortoises, cockatoos, and other animals made appearances in the Wild Theatre or other locations in the Zoo. These sessions allow Zoo visitors to see and touch some of our smaller reptiles and birds up close, and hopefully this interaction will lead them to be inspired to take conservation action.
Feedback
We want to know how we’re doing so we regularly check with both Zoo visitors and Wellington residents to see how they rate their Zoo. Half of all Wellington residents (49%) visited the Zoo in the past year and 86% of these visitors rated their visit as good or very good (with very good being the highest rating). Households with a youngest child aged 5 to 13 rate their experience at the zoo more positively than average, with 95% rating it good or very good. Feedback from our Zoo visitors tells the same story, with nearly nine out of ten visitors rating their visit as good or very good.
Special events
Wellington was the host city for World Environment Day this year, and Wellington Zoo joined in the celebrations. Zoo visitors could plant trees around the Zoo, learn all about the global amphibian crisis and the challenge of trying to conserve our native flora and fauna against introduced pest species. 10% of all Zoo admission fees on World Environment Day were donated to ARAZPA’s Year of The Frog fund.
Children’s Day at the Zoo was again popular with the children of Wellington. The addition of the Wild Theatre allowed for a range of activities for children of all ages to enjoy. Activities this year included a bouncy castle, face painting, special interactive musical sessions, giveaways and animal appearances.
Telling stories
We know that our Zoo visitors learn more about our animals and the natural world by doing as well as seeing, so our recently opened exhibits have emphasised visitor experience alongside animal welfare. The African Savannah was designed to bring Zoo visitors closer to the animals and to offer areas of contextual play for our young (and young at heart visitors). The new giraffe house allows visitors to observe training and see the animals from the ground to eye level, an experience that allows visitors to absorb exactly how large giraffes are and see the zoo ‘turned inside out’.
Next to the African Savannah is the Research Camp, an area for visitors to explore, play and pretend they are researchers in Africa. A previous researcher has had their Landrover ‘stuck’ in the mud – this has proved to be popular with kids of all ages pretending to drive the Landrover. Back at the camp, the supply crates can be opened to reveal unique, touchable items. Visitors can also sit around the potjie and braai and observe the savannah animals over the dry river bed. At the centre of the area is a large bronze rhino. This rhino was acquired with funds from Wellington City’s Public Arts Panel from Wellington’s renowned sculptor, Colin Webster Watson. Colin purchased this rhino in the 1970s in San Francisco with the intent to bring her (affectionately called Winnie) home for the children of Wellington to enjoy. Winnie is more than 120 years old and was created in Paris using a rhino at Paris Zoo as a model.
The refurbishment of the Twilight has continued this research theme, encouraging visitors to enter our ‘bush hut’ and learn about how scientists and Wellington Zoo are helping to save our national icons, the kiwi and tuatara – and what they can do to help. The conservation action we would like our visitors to take home after exploring the exhibit is that of responsible pet ownership – to keep their dogs on a lead and to bring their cats in at night.
Living Classroom
This year saw almost 15,000 students visit the Zoo with most of these participating in the Ministry of Education’s Learning Experiences Outside The Classroom (LEOTC) programme.
There was a 23% increase in the number of classes that came to the Zoo but the total number of students visiting was slightly less than last year. We have also had a significant increase in the number of school groups (almost double the number of classes) coming to use the Zoo as a living classroom, who have not enrolled in a formal learning session. Nearly half of all schools from Wellington city visited the Zoo this year.
Our ever popular Zoo sleepover programme saw a 37% increase in schools spending the night at the Zoo this year. Children love the experience of touring the Zoo at night, and in the morning, and learning about our animals and the way Zoo works in a fun, informal manner.
In February 2008, new Ministry of Education curriculum was implemented in schools. Wellington Zoo launched the Journeys of Discovery learning programme to support the new curriculum. Our aim is for all learning sessions to have an element of their session out in the Zoo and for students to have a unique animal experience – meeting animals up close, making enrichment or going behind the scenes. The introduction of this new programme has been well received by teachers with 75% of teachers saying their children have a greater appreciation of the natural world as a result of the visit.
Holiday programme
Nearly 800 children enjoyed the Zoo’s school holiday programme this year, run during the three term breaks. The holiday programme continues to be popular with most days of the programme booking out well in advance. Children are able to choose from a variety of themed days including zoo keeper for day, making their own zoo movie and helping with animal enrichment.