Case Study Perth Zoo

Case Study Report

Executive Summary

Zoos are rarely financially self-sustaining as they provides education, research, general conservation programs and living exhibit which are costly to maintain, so it is important that there is a constant flow of revenue in order to maintain the non-commercial aspects of zoo business.

Perth zoo had borrowed money to build new exhibit and visitor experience and the idea was that the admission revenue attracted by the new exhibits and associated growth in corporate sponsorship would effectively repay the zoo’s debt. The introduction of Sunday football and a number of other competing events had, put a limit to constantly achieve high number of visitors and ongoing sponsorship revenue.

With a new management by 2000, the zoo had debt of about $20 million. The zoo no longer had a government approval to borrow more money, which meant that the zoo no longer had any available funds for future capital development or perform any maintenance on existing exhibitory which are now becoming old and run down.

This led the new management team to cut expenditures in both commercial and

non-commercial area of the zoo that resulted in an internal conflict within the organization between the commercial and non-commercial staff of the zoo and competition for resource began to rise and an “us and them” mentality deepened.

By using relevant service marketing theory, the new management restructured the business plan and taken steps to change its human resource management and improve the recruitment process by hiring the right people. They’ve also drawn up an internal marketing plan to resolve the conflict between the two areas of the zoo, and gave their employees a sense of belonging by inviting them all to meeting concerning zoo budgetary and asked them for their input.

Even though the new management has successfully managed to resolve the financial and budgetary problems that the zoo was facing, there are still a number of issues that the zoo must be ready to deal with as it moves forward into the future. Firstly, the zoo must ensure that its human resource practises continue to be developed in order to maintain staff engagement. Also, the changing expectations of visitors means that the zoo must develop new and innovative strategies in order to retain its visitors. Competition also proved to be a key influence on admission rates, and there is potential in the future for this to further impact the organisation. Lastly. the weak economic climate may continue to impact discretionary spending at the zoo.

To deal with this, the organisation should continue to develop its human resource practises, using the ‘wheel of successful human resources’ described by Lovelock, Patterson and Wirtz (2010). Innovative ideas