‘We’re getting down to bare bones’: Relief as Fota Wildlife Park to reopen in April

The Government decision to allow zoos to reopen at the end of April has been warmly welcomed by management at Fota Wildlife Park in Cork who feared they might face permanent closure if they could not reopen this year.

Director of Fota Wildlife Park, Sean McKeown, told The Irish Times the reopening would enable the park to try earn important revenue from visitors throughout the busy summer months.

The Cabinet agreed on Tuesday to permit outdoor visitor attractions such as zoos and places of heritage to open from April 26th.

“At least now we’ve an opening date and we’re looking forward to getting back into action and welcoming people to the park, even though it’s a bit galling, given the fine weather that we’ve enjoyed over the last few days, that we won’t be able to open for most of April,” Mr McKeown said.

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He said remaining closed over the Easter holidays was a blow to the park, as it has become an increasingly important period with the number of visitors continuing to rise up until 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic hit last year.

However, Mr McKeown is looking forward to the park building up its visitor numbers through May to September, a period that accounts for 60 per cent of visitors and provides a revenue stream that helps the park survive the quieter winter period.

“We’re going to build up our numbers gradually. We will have a maximum carrying capacity of around 2,300 when we reopen but we’re going to start with maybe 600 or 700 visitors over the first few days to ensure social-distancing measures are properly adhered to,” he said.

“We opened last year with 500 at any one time and we’re planning to have three tranches of 500. So that’s 1,500 a day initially, with people, including members, booking online and paying online so they come in for their pre-booked slot which will help regulate the flow.”

Reduced visit time

Mr McKeown said in pre-Covid times the average visit time to Fota Wildlife Park was between three and four hours, but they expect that to reduce to about two hours now as all indoor attractions and the playground are closed to visitors.

It costs about €4.5 million a year to run the 100-acre park, Mr McKeown said, which opened in 1983 and is home to some 135 species including cheetahs, lions, tigers, giraffes, rhinos, wallabies, kangaroos and zebras, as well as a host of primates and birds such as flamingos and penguins.

In 2019 Fota Wildlife Park, which has some 1,350 animals in total, attracted 462,000 visitors, generating an income of €5.2 million. Visitor numbers fell in 2020 to 385,000 as the park closed from St Patrick’s Day until May 22nd as a result of the first Covid-19 lockdown.

“We’re just relieved to be opening again. We will be down €1.8 million or so in gate receipts when we do reopen due to being shut since the start of the year, so we have to try and make up some of that shortfall during the busy summer months of June, July and August and into September.

“That’s all dependent of course on people staycationing and not heading off to the sun if they’ve got their double vaccination. It’s all very hard to predict still at this stage and we may still end up looking for funding from Government before the end of the year.

“Last year, we went through any financial reserves we had built up ourselves and now we’re getting down to bare bones again. If we had a good summer, it would put us in a good position going into the winter but we don’t really see any operational profitability until next April.”