Sun, Dec 21, 2014 page6

• FEATURE: Evolving zoos let guests bed down alongside bears

  • AFP, LA FLECHE, France
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  Forget trekking to the arctic. French tourists are opting for the luxury way to spend the night with a polar bear: beside a log fire not far from home. The only thing on ice is the champagne.

  Since it launched “A night at home with the bear” in October, Zoo de La Fleche in western France has booked up its comfy lodge overlooking Taiko the polar bear’s enclosure until the end of next year.

  Safari-style lodges are part of a strategy by French animal parks to update aging structures and attract new visitors. They follow a worldwide trend, from an Africa-themed resort at a zoo in Canberra, Australia, to party nights at zoos from London to Los Angeles.

  

  From a guest lodge, a visitor watches polar bear Taiko in its enclosure in the zoo in La Fleche, France, on Friday last week.

  Photo: AFP

  La Fleche zoo, which opened in 1946, was in need of boost when it opened its first lodge last year.

  Visitor numbers soon increased and the park now has eight lodges.

  Their style reflects the architecture of areas where the neighboring animals would normally reside: Arctic lodges with log fires for observing polar bears, Asian-styled lodges surrounded by bamboo and rice-paddies for tiger-watching.

  With immense bay windows, the three-star, six-person polar bear lodge costs at least 200 euros (US$250) per adult per night.

  Visitors can observe Taiko and another polar bear, Katinka, swimming through a massive window in the comfortable suite.

  Champagne and a gastronomic dinner are on the menu, while the howls of Arctic wolves ring out through the night.

  “The idea is that visitors feel like they are in a cocoon suspended in time, totally immersed in the animal environment,” zoo owner Stephane Da Cunha said.

  Six other lodges are due to open by 2016, ahead of “a big African savannah project,” to include a hotel complex for business customers.

  The project — which cost more than 300,000 euros for the most luxurious polar bear section alone — should be profitable within several years since the accommodation is fully booked, Da Cunha said.

  Other French zoos are trying similar initiatives, including Cerza, in western France, and Sainte-Croix, in the northeast, which houses European animals.

  Visitors to Sainte-Croix must wait almost one-and-a-half years to make a reservation for its most expensive lodge near the wolf enclosure, spokesman Clement Leroux said.

  Le Pal zoo in southern France is to increase its lodges from 24 to 31 next year.

  “There’s an extremely strong demand,” zoo director Arnaud Bennet said.

  Zoos have to renovate to keep up with a fickle public, said Sophie Huberson, from the national union of leisure, amusement and cultural spaces.

  All zoos which have created unusual lodgings have seen their revenues rise, Huberson said.

  “They’ll all end up following this model, which lets them increase their capacity to invest,” she said. “Those which don’t evolve will see their visitor numbers drop.”

  Some zoos, like the main zoo in Paris, have invested in more natural and spacious surroundings in a bid to attract more visitors.

  They aim to extend the time visitors stay, so they eat at on-site restaurants and buy souvenirs, in an economic model similar to that of theme parks, Huberson said.

  France’s top zoo followed a slightly different formula to success, with huge hotels outside the park. Beauval, in northern France, has more than 1 million visitors annually and 6,000 animals.

  The zoo opened its first hotel — outside the site — in 2008. It is to open a third next year, with a China theme in reference to its pandas. The whole complex is to have 900 rooms.

  “They told us it wouldn’t work,” managing director Rodolphe Delordhe said. “Today, people are spending their holidays here.”
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