Guide books and the economic viability

[mazfc]

they would make a lot if they sold a guide book.

This was raised on the Chester news thread and it piqued my interest.

I do sometimes wonder about the economic viability of guidebooks. They must have a lot of initial costs putting one together, then regular visitors (by that I'm thinking 2-3 times a year) are going to want updated versions.

I be interested to hear from posters which of their locals do guide books and which have done in the past, and which have never done so. And the formats that they take.

 

[Adrian k]

I can't understand why collections haven't got a guide book but on the basic of a history of the zoo with a printed separate sheet inside with an up to date map and list of current species in the collection.

This will surely be a profit making adventure for the collections as updated maps can be printed off at their own offices this could also include updates of new births or recently moved species.

 

[Javan Rhino]

This was raised on the Chester news thread and it piqued my interest.

I do sometimes wonder about the economic viability of guidebooks. They must have a lot of initial costs putting one together, then regular visitors (by that I'm thinking 2-3 times a year) are going to want updated versions.

I be interested to hear from posters which of their locals do guide books and which have done in the past, and which have never done so. And the formats that they take.

I think that if smaller collections can produce a guidebook and make enough profit on them to keep them viable, there should be nothing stopping larger collections producing a guidebook as they will be printing in a greater bulk, and in theory this will reduce the printing costs overall.

Chester have said on several occasions that they don't produce a guidebook because 'they have an app which is easy to update, whereas a guidebook is out of date by the time its printed.' I personally disagree with this theory for several reasons:

1) When I had the app installed, it wasn't up-to-date and only listed a small handful of species they kept. I deleted it as I never used it and gained nothing from it - I still look at my old guidebooks.

2) It jumps on the 'everybody has a smartphone' bandwagon. Not everybody does have a smartphone - many people in the UK aren't tech-savy and would have no idea how to use a smart phone and they are expensive. There will be a decent proportion of visitors that will have to do without as the obsession with moving everything in the world to a virtual existence leaves them behind.

3) If you do have a smartphone and use of the app, I get absolutely no 3G signal going around Chester Zoo to access the app. I don't know if this is the same for all networks or just O2, but I can flick through my guidebook at any point in the day without relying on satellites and signals to dictate whether I can or not.

4) For many, zoo guide books are collectible as they provide a historical look back through a collection's life. It is interesting to compare one years guidebook from the next, looking at how the map has changed to see if things have moved enclosures, looking out for what species have appeared and disappeared, seeing if those 'future plans' listed ever came to fruition etc. They are a great historical resource, and one that future zoo history enthusiasts won't have for this generation of zoological collections.

 

[gentle lemur]

As I was scanning some of my old photos before Xmas, I had to look through my old zoo guide books - I am not a serious collector, but I am glad to have them from my old visits as I scribbled notes in some of them. This thread made me realise something that I had never considered before - most of the old guidebooks from Dutch and German zoos had several pages of advertisements from local businesses of all sorts, but I can't recall ever seeing an advertisement in a British guidebook (except for the special case of paired zoos like London & Whipsnade and Howletts & Port Lympne).
I don't know if this is still done in European zoos, but as we know that newspapers rely on advertising to stay financially viable in competition with the web, could this help British zoos to finance their guidebooks?

Alan

 

[SHAVINGTONZOO]

A Guide Book should be an essential for any serious zoological collection.

And should be profitable.

(Bear in mind that printing costs have fallen hugely - in real terms - over recent years)

 

[Crowthorne]

most of the old guidebooks from Dutch and German zoos had several pages of advertisements from local businesses of all sorts, but I can't recall ever seeing an advertisement in a British guidebook (except for the special case of paired zoos like London & Whipsnade and Howletts & Port Lympne).

A lot of old UK guidebooks had advertisements, especially pre-1980s. Some of the very early London ones had pages and pages of advertisements (including some rather dodgy-ones by todays standards, adverts for pet shops that sold exotic animals like chimps, or even ones placed by the zoo itself offering any spare animals to private collectors). Adverts in guidebooks seem to have stopped being a thing in the 1980s.

 

[Tim Brown]

As per last years accounts London made a profit on its 2014 guide,and if they can do it(they will hardly be cutting corners) anyone can.Ive written/been involved in a few guides and thats where the cost is, plus a designer..as SHAVINGTONZOO says, printing costs have never been more realistic - the IZES` Zoo Grapevine magazine is A4 full colour and printed in the hundreds rather than thousands,that situation simply would not have been viable even 20 years ago.

 

[zoogiraffe]

Hamerton Zoo will be selling a new guidebook this year,for I believe the cost of £3 which will have cost them less than 80p to produce for each guidebook,but as Chester Zoo's Marketing Department have said many times over the last few years there is no profit,in producing a guidebook,but yet as can be seen Hamerton turn a pretty reasonable profit from there guidebooks,which would be printed in far smaller print runs than any that Chester would do,as a large print run does bring down the cost per copy by a reasonable sum!!

 

[Shorts]

Two further points:

1. I'm not sure regular visitors requiring a regularly updated guide book is really much of an issue. I suspect that the most regular visitors don't need a guide book, most zoos don't really change that much in the short term and this issue never really seems to have been a problem in the past -I've several examples of guide books where the only thing that changes between issues is the cover;

2. I don't use apps myself but suspect they wouldn't solve this perceived issue anyway. As Javan Rhino pointed out, they don't seem comprehensive and I can't imagine collections wanting to constantly update them if, it seems, they can't be bothered to prepare a guidebook in the first place.

I'm in agreement with others above in finding it incomprehensible that a number of fair sized collections don't produce guidebooks. If some smaller (and many large) collections can do it profitably (I'm sure they wouldn't continue to produce them if they made a loss) then collections such as Chester and Edinburgh, at least, must be losing out on an additional lucrative revenue stream -surely Edinburgh could shift some numbers with Pandas or Koalas on the front.

The more cynical side of me wonders if the real reason for a zoo not producing a guide book is not profitability, per se, but efficiency/idleness* -it's far less effort to make more money by creeping up prices for entrance fees and other secondary income streams (souvenirs, food) or charging extra for "bolt on" activities (crazy golf, sky walking, play areas).

*delete as applicable, according to taste - I'll go for idleness, as not producing a guide book is, for me, failing to to take advantage of a significant opportunity to educate and enthuse visitors

 

[Pertinax]

most of the old guidebooks from Dutch and German zoos had several pages of advertisements from local businesses of all sorts, but I can't recall ever seeing an advertisement in a British guidebook

I had an old Belle Vue guidebook from the 1970's, it was very slim on animal information- just photos and a few lines of text for each species, but crammed full of adverts. I seem to remember the early Twycross guides had some zoo-related adverts too- e.g. the heating firm that supplied heaters for the Giraffe house, that sort of thing. But I don't remember other UK guidebooks of that era containing adverts- Dudley might have been another though.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

But I don't remember other UK guidebooks of that era containing adverts- Dudley might have been another though.

I own a Dudley guidebook from the early 1960's which is jam-packed with adverts.

 

[Tim May]

......Some of the very early London ones had pages and pages of advertisements (including some rather dodgy-ones by todays standards, adverts for pet shops that sold exotic animals like chimps, or even ones placed by the zoo itself offering any spare animals to private collectors). ....

And even advertisements for taxidermists – something that no zoo would do today.

(I used to like the advertisements for Britains zoo animal models which were available in the zoo shop.)

 

[Pertinax]

I own a Dudley guidebook from the early 1960's which is jam-packed with adverts.

I had a feeling that might be the case, it had the same commercialised feel as BelleVue in those days. If Chessington had guidebooks in those days, they might well have carried a lot of adverts too.

 

[sooty mangabey]

The more cynical side of me wonders if the real reason for a zoo not producing a guide book is not profitability, per se, but efficiency/idleness* -it's far less effort to make more money by creeping up prices for entrance fees and other secondary income streams (souvenirs, food) or charging extra for "bolt on" activities (crazy golf, sky walking, play areas).

I think this is the key point. Who would be responsible for a zoo's guidebook? The education department? Probably pretty stretched, and with expertise in other areas. The marketing department? Not massively interested in such things, on the whole - and, as we know, largely ignorant of animal matters. So it sort of falls between a number of stools, and slips away - until someone is interested enough to make it happen.

In a previous discussion on Tierpark Berlin, the point was made that they sold "only" 10,000 copies of their guidebook each year. Only? That figure seems pretty high to me - and points to the potential profitably of such things. It is no coincidence that the safari parks and aquariums - the most profit-focused "zoos" in the UK - still produce guides. They know they can sweat some cash from them. For Edinburgh, Chester and others, it is all just a bit too much effort - and it is so much easier to hide behind the app falderol, which, as @JavanRhino points out so well above, is just nonsense.

 

[sooty mangabey]

Hamerton Zoo will be selling a new guidebook this year,for I believe the cost of £3 which will have cost them less than 80p to produce for each guidebook

I'm guessing that this doesn't include any cost for the actual writing of the guide, which will have been done in-house, nor for the design, which will be pretty functional, if previous Hamerton guides are anything to go by.

But it shows what can be done. How many copies will they sell in a year? 500? 1000? It's a couple of thousand pounds of income for a zoo where such a sum makes quite a difference, in return for a few hours spent adapting the last guide's text to bring it up to date. And, meanwhile, the zoo is fulfilling its responsibility to educate, and is also marketing itself effectively.

 

[SHAVINGTONZOO]

I think this is the key point. Who would be responsible for a zoo's guidebook? The education department? Probably pretty stretched, and with expertise in other areas. The marketing department? Not massively interested in such things, on the whole - and, as we know, largely ignorant of animal matters. So it sort of falls between a number of stools, and slips away - until someone is interested enough to make it happen.

Of course, there was a time when Chester produced an annual guidebook and a monthly "Zoo News" which was available to the general public!

 

[Tim Brown]

There was also a long,long,period when a guide as such was NOT produced at Chester...and most others DID produce a guide!

 

[Bib Fortuna]

In compare to germany, Uk Collectors can he happy so many Zoos and Aquariums still offer a guidebook, more or less regulary, and, of course in diffrent quality, what was defenitely much better in the past than now.

In the past years, many of germany big zoos have stopped producing guidebooks, so cologne and Magdeburg in 1998, Osnabrück in 1999, Hagenbeck in 2006,Dresden and Dortmund in 2005, Hannover Zoo in 2012, Berlin Zoo in 2014 and the Tierpark Berlin still sells the 2013 Gerenuk-Edition, what will be the last guidebook under the Ruleness of Knierim-he don't like books, so he stopped offering guides, Annual reports and Bongo and Milu.

Recently Nuremberg told me on request they will not make a new guidebook, also Duisburg and Frankurt Zoo hasn't decided yet, if they will make another guidebook or not. The last 2010 guide is sold out since 2012, so have only a map since then. All of that Zoos are not interested anymore in guidebooks because they say, people don't buy them, but no wonder if they have to pay 5 or even more euros for a little booklet-Rostocks new guidebooks costs 10 Euro-so who the hell buys it, if a family of 2 adults and two kids have to pay 40 or more euros only for entree fees ? Nobody-except Zoo enthuasists..

So it is important to offer them for a cheap price,and if the zoo do not offer at the same time a free map, the people HAVE to buy the guide to get a map-so what german zoos did in the past...

Recently a small german zoo has published for the first time a guidebook. It was sold for only two euros and sold out within a couple of weeks, so they had to order a second printing...so from my point of view, guidebooks still work also in times of Apps and Internet. For this year,Stuttgart and Munich have announced new guidebooks, also Erfurt,Halle and even Dresden after 10 Years of no guidebook.We'll see if they really do so...

I mean, Guidebooks are not there to make a profit, they are a service for the visitors to give them more infomations about the zoo, its history, the animal inventory and background infos. They are important, they are the"business card"for a zoo...

So it seems, in Britain guidebooks are better sellers than in germany, but it depends on if it is an aquarium or a zoo, so the Oceanarium Bournemouth told me, they do not sell them very good and and the current guideboook could be their last...the only german aquariums offering a guide are, how could it be diffrent, the Sealife Centres-it seems they sell them with success, because they ask the visitors at the ticket booth, if they want to buy a Guidebook..

I think, Zoo guides do not have a bright future in germany, switzerland and austria, but maybe in Britain, in poland and czech.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

Berlin Zoo in 2014 and the Tierpark Berlin still sells the 2013 Gerenuk-Edition, what will be the last guidebook under the Ruleness of Knierim-he don't like books, so he stopped offering guides, Annual reports and Bongo and Milu.

You never know, of course - he was also responsible for the discontinuation of guidebooks at Tierpark Hellabrunn, after all, but as you say:

For this year,Stuttgart and Munich have announced new guidebooks, also Erfurt,Halle and even Dresden after 10 Years of no guidebook.We'll see if they really do so...

So it is possible once Knieriem moves on in the fullness of time, the Berlin collections may get guidebooks once again.

 

[Nanook]

I had a feeling that might be the case, it had the same commercialised feel as BelleVue in those days. If Chessington had guidebooks in those days, they might well have carried a lot of adverts too.

The Chessington Zoo guidebooks, certainly from the 1950s, 60s and 70s all carried plenty of adverts, for things like ice cream and Guiness Beer - the latter had an arrangement with the zoo for many years to advertise that particular brand of alcohol.