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Industry Insider
Animal attraction
Managing Director of West Midland Safari Park via Butlins and Port Lympne, Chris Kelly, shares his history and thoughts on the industry in conversation with Park World’s Jon Bruford
Jon Bruford: What’s your background? Chris Kelly: I have been at West Midland Safari Park for nearly three years. My path in the leisure industry goes all the way back to the old Butlins days around 30 years ago. Seven years before I joined West Midland Safari Park, I was responsible for accommodation and events as a director at Port Lympne.
JB: Following your previous role at Port Lympne, what made you well-suited to the role at West Midland Safari Park? CK: Initially, I was thinking of retiring. However, I noticed that West Midland Safari Park had secured planning permission to build lodges so I contacted them to see if I could help. I was a local and I had known the park for most of my life. I was not looking to become a director or gain an official role; I was just happy to support them in any way I could. They were interested and I was asked to meet the park owners, Groupe Looping. In January, they took me on as a director responsible for the new projects and in March I became operations director. When taking the role, I was attracted to the drive from Groupe Looping
which was very similar to that of Port Lympne. They focused on enhancing the experience for guests and for animals, developing accommodation to become immersive and different, and improving all animal paddocks. Over the past three years, we have made developments with the sole purpose of making the environment better for the animals. We’ve built new animal houses for the elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and cheetahs, and within the next six months we will also enhance the enclosures for lions and tigers.
JB: Is there a local market for the lodges? By having lodges are you targeting a different demographic in the local market, or are you trying to attract people from further away? CK: That’s an interesting question, and it is something I’ve discussed with our
SEPTEMBER 2022
marketing team when looking at the demographics of park visitors. We’ve got a nucleus of people that come to the park who are the day visitors, families, and children. We’re also attracting people who want to do something different and have the spending power to do so. We haven’t skimped on the design or the interior of the lodges, and it’s quite expensive to stay there as they should be. As soon as you walk through the door of one of the lodges, you can see straight through to the animals right outside your window. The feedback from guests has been phenomenal and there is an attraction from the wider audience with visitors from the North, South West, Wales and South East. However, particularly within the last year and a half, 80% of our occupancy within the lodge has been from local visitors i.e., they can travel to the park within an hour. Our occupancy levels are phenomenal. We are marketing to a bit of a wider audience, and there seems to be an appetite particularly in the midlands. In Worcestershire where we’re based, it is incredibly beautiful and visitors coming to the park view it as an escape. Especially if you’re coming from one of the more urban areas in Birmingham, this area of the West Midland is a completely different way of life. It is a fantastic place that’s got potential to grow a lot further because we have a market there to go to.
JB: How has the pandemic impacted the park? CK: We have 22 lodges, and we’ve got seven or eight new animal houses and paddocks that we’ve kept afloat. We had around 100 people feeding the animals, obviously we couldn’t furlough them, so we had support from our parent group. We had support from the council and had to furlough a lot of staff, but we didn’t make anyone redundant. After the pandemic, I worked very closely on the customer service and
health and safety side of the business. While conducting research into guest satisfaction, I decided to limit the number of visitors in the park to 6,000. I remember this park having 10-11,000 visitors on the weekend or during
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