(Bird Song)
Mike was very innovative because previously to (Newquay Zoo) he owned the Seal
Sanctuary in Gweek and he had a teaching background
He taught in Wales as a teacher
(Ruff Lemurs Calling)
That's lemurs... So yeah, it was because he was that innovative those innovations
he did and it broke the mold to some degree and of course the zoo started
winning awards, I think we won the best small zoo award and that again gives you a huge publicity.
When I started work here I may be wrong but I always had the impression that
Restormal Council sold the zoo because it wasn't paying it was an
unnecessary overhead for them and visitor numbers were probably about 50,000 a
year and they weren't... the zoo wasn't a viable. My job was to try and increase
the numbers and when I left if you included all the special offers and
everything else and the season ticket holders, I remember Mike saying that we
were fast approaching to 200,000.
And the thing is it was called Animal World when I got here and I wasn't happy
with Animal World so I persuaded Mike to change it back to
what it used to be Newquay Zoo and we had a new logo done and everything else
and then we just kicked it off from there and once the people knew what
they were coming to they're coming to a zoo you know it's not a glorified pet
shop. Animal World what did that tell you nothing you know we got Furniture
World... We used to have a Furniture World just up the road
Water World yeah, Animal World yeah, and I didn't like the idea of Animal World
so we changed it to a zoo and so again we made a big deal of that. Mike also came
up with Prams and Pushchairs which we did on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that was
I can't remember it's reduced admission free cup of tea
(It was the tea that swung it) and we used to get like whole groups of mums
coming in with toddlers then season tickets, we used to have a barbecues
for the season ticket holders, we even had Scouts camp over here one night
because I helped put all their tents up.
Mike had this vision of getting the zoo up on
its feet and running so to some degree I was left to my own devices to do what I
wanted. Didn't always quite go down well but most of the time it went down well
like joining CATA you know I wanted the zoo as part of CATA because
previously I'm sat on the CATA executive and I always thought you know Mike had lost
out and eventually he agreed and again that opens another ballgame because you
appear in the CATA leaflets they had their own publications so people you
know you pick it up in the supermarket or wherever and you look at it and it
will say you know you can here there, and there in the middle of it
would be Newquay Zoo and you'd think: "Oh didn't know there was a
zoo." So they'd come here then you know and then if you wanted to you could put
coupons in we did coupons in the West Britain and the Cornishmen which i think
is the the Newquay version.
We've had a walk around this morning I mean there
was the stage where you could stand in the office and you could see almost down
to the deer enclosure and then he got that guy in to do all the planting and
now it really looks... quite exotic and we had changes you know the Sulawesi's
(Macaques) ent into what used to be the Bear Pit. We got rid of... we changed some of the
enclosures while I was here you know then I think that was probably your
doing (Mark Norris) we started doing the talks and the animal encounters
I used to go out and go to all the holiday parks, hotels and used to go and
see the receptionists and say come around and have a look at the zoo we
used to give them tickets you know like two adults two children you know to
encourage them to come and have a look around knowing full well that if you if
you go into a hotel and it's a bit of a dull day and you think I need somewhere
to take the children and they'd never been here before they go to the
receptionist and say what's the zoo like? If the receptionist had never been to
the zoo they wouldn't know so the idea was to encourage them to
come to the zoo themselves and have a look around and then I once went to the
hotel at the top of Chester Road talking to somebody there and he said "Do you
know" what he said "I could have sworn I heard a lions roaring last night" he
said "must be my imagination" I said no it's not
there's a zoo half a mile away this has got two lions and yeah he said I didn't know
that so he came down to have a look 'round probably because I gave him a free ticket
(Lion Roaring)
We used to do special deals
with people like Hendra Holiday Park, we used to invite the owners down with
their families in fact they had free passes they could
come and go as much as they wanted you know I mean you just you just have to work
with everybody else that's in tourism you know
so that at the end of the day it's beneficial to everybody. We used to give
prizes umm... like St. Ives Holiday Village used to have a children's family
day and they used to have a fancy dress competition
and other things and we used to take stuff down there and use that as prizes plus
the free tickets it was always as the free tickets to get
'em here because if they weren't going to come we'd lost nothing but if they
did come then the chances are they would they would eat something or buy
something in the shop so that was a big plus it hadn't cost us anything other
than printing the ticket and they were all numbered and they all had a
date on them when I used to issue them I used to write the date on them and then
at the end of the season the girls in the ticket booth would stamp them
with the date and we'd see how long it took for them to come back and some would
come back within a couple of days others would come back weeks and weeks later so
you know you could judge then how effective the ticket was.
Bribery is... well it wasn't bribery...
it was it was yeah it was I supposed it was bribery is always
a powerful weapon when you're trying to get people to come and have a look round
you know two adults two children free... Why not?
They say that if you have a good experience they go away and tell three
people. If they have a bad experience they'll go away and tell everybody and I
learnt that working for the Tourist Board
and that's a powerful weapon is telling three people especially if they
go if they go back to the holiday park or the hotel or that they'll say we went
to the zoo we had a fantastic time so the next time someone who says well
where can we take the kids the reception is going to say "Oh take them down the zoo"
and some things we we tried and it didn't work and then I'd sit down
with Mike and say well we did that and it didn't work and we can't think why
so perhaps next year we'll do it again but we'll vary it slightly, you know.
We had Jenny Agutter who actually has a home down in the Lizard and she came and
I think she opened the Puma enclosure and then we had another well-known
entertainer who came and opened the Children's Zoo. (That would have been Phillip Schofield)
Yes, 'cuase the Schofield's come from Newquay and there was Phillip, his brother and his parents, they came
here and we were busy that day.
Hosting Jenny Agutter was probably one of my
things I remember most, she was so nice and she was so amenable she just did
whatever you wanted her to do you know none of this "well i'm a star" it was
"well you tell me what you want and I'll do it"
"tell me where you want me to stand tell me what you want me to say" you know yeah
things like that
And I remember telling a group of ladies that as part of our security
the last person out used to let the lions out and let them run the grounds
and they went back and told a reporter in Oxford and I went in the office and
Mike threw a newspaper at me "This is your doing..." and I said but we got
in the newspaper you know people will want to come and see the zoo where they use the
lions as like a burglar system you know the fact that we had... what's the little
deers called? Mara. Little maras... I mean the lions would have gobbled them
up no problem and then me saying to somebody once, who asked me if the keepers ever
went in with the lions, to which the reply from me was "only once"
(Laughter)