The smaller the gift shop the better. I visited seaworld once and every damn exhibit had its own giftshop you had to exit through. It felt like the exhibits were secondary. Zoos should be academic, not entertainment.
@DelacoursLangur I agree that SeaWorld is a joke with toys for sale around just about every darn corner of the park...however, a large gift shop is a fantastic money-earner for a zoo. If you want to see more modern, exciting animal exhibits built? Then a gift shop is one step in that direction, plus kids love zoo souvenirs.
@snowleopard For an awful lot of major zoos on the continent, they don't rely on gate or secondary spend as a major source of income as they are local government funded - you'll probably notice this even more in Germany. The gift shops and restaurants are often rather more token efforts than you'd expect in a British or US zoo as a result.
@Maguari That really is interesting. The whole funding notion of zoos is something that I find fascinating and I always look to Tacoma's Point Defiance Zoo or Fresno's Fresno Chaffee Zoo. Both of those American zoos have had $80 million or more EACH in taxpayer funding over the past 15 years. Local neighourhoods help pay for their zoos! A big restaurant or gift shop in an American zoo means more money towards exhibits, conservation funds and improvements to the zoo.
We have covered this before in other threads, but the very opposite is true in the UK where the greater part of a zoos income is TAKEN by the Government in tax, rather than the other way around. Colleagues in US zoos are dismayed when this is detailed to them; and have stated many times that their zoos would have to close if they were subjected to the financial restraints we have to operate under in the UK.
