The boss of Chester Zoo has revealed the impact of the cost-of-living crisis as the popular visitor attraction faces its annual utility bills jumping to £3m.
Jamie Christon, who has been chief executive since March 2021, called on the government to do more to help businesses and charities with their bills while outlining how the zoo is attempting to find new sources of income.
That includes opening a new wedding venue in May 2023 as well as drawing up plans for a hotel.
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The zoo, which had been forced to close for 208 days during the pandemic, is also eyeing up ways to increase its use of clean energy to help keep costs down.
However Mr Christon, who first joined as chief operating officer in 2013, warned the budget for 2023 is "pretty tight" and that the zoo will have to find ways to be more efficient in order to maintain "our world class visitor attraction status".
On the impact the cost-of-living crisis is having on the zoo, Mr Christon said: "We recovered from the pandemic after 208 days of closure. Considering it cost £1.8m to run the zoo when it's shut and 97% of our income came from admissions you can see how difficult that period was. We came out of the pandemic and then went straight into a cost-of-living crisis.
"We've got 110 buildings at Chester Zoo; many of them need to be heated or cooled to particular temperatures or lit in particular ways because of the types of animals or plants we have in there.
"That all costs money and means that we are concerned about the rise in utility costs - you can't put a jumper on a Komodo dragon!
"We have to maintain those temperatures to maintain the health and welfare of each of those animals and plants.
"We, as a conservation charity, rely on visitors coming in through the gates and there is concern that the cost-of-living crisis may reduce those numbers.
"There's concerns on many different fronts, including our staff. At peak we employ 1,000 people and looking after our staff and making sure they have the right rates of pay and are content in their jobs is very important.
"We don't receive any money from the government. Everything we get is through charitable donations into the zoo. If we are going to continue to do the work that we do as a global charity in the midst of an ongoing extinction crisis we have to continue fighting."
In response to the challenges, the zoo has set about trying to find new sources of income, including converting and extending an old stables to create a 300-seat wedding venue. The Square is due to open in May next year.
The luxury space is an extension of an existing grade II-listed stable block that has stood at the heart of the 128-acre zoo since it opened in 1931. The original structures were once home to some of the zoo’s first animals such as lions, bears and chimpanzees.
It's also working on plans for a hotel that will sit on edge of the zoo and overlook the giraffe paddock and the lake.
The plans were submitted for consideration in June and will include 54 lodges in varying styles and sizes to begin with, with the option to add a further nine in the future.
Mr Christon said: "We're looking at diversifying our income stream. Before the pandemic, 97% of our income came from admissions and that was a model that had worked for 90 years.
"No one had ever predicted a pandemic like we had but we have learnt lessons and we're starting to move our income streams elsewhere.
"The wedding venue will help us diversify outside the normal operating hours of the zoo to bring extra income in.
"We're looking to generate at least £500,000 in the first year, moving to £1m of additional income in the future."
"We've done a lot of due diligence with the business case for the hotel and we're looking to start building that next year.
"Even though we're in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis we recognise the fact that, as a global charity, we need to keep moving forward if we're going to maintain income in pretty difficult times."
Mr Christon has also called on the government to do more to help businesses and charities like Chester Zoo to cope with the rise in inflation.
He said: "There's definitely the ability for the government to do more. I totally understand the government's predicaments at the moment but for charities like Chester Zoo we rely on people coming in through the doors and our visitors spending money when they get here.
"We don't have any other means of maintaining our income, apart from some of the diversifications I talked about earlier.
"Some sort of cap on energy costs for charities because of the immense amount of power we have to generate would help a lot.
"We're looking into ways to generate power ourselves and taking ourselves off, where we can, from mains gas and being more reliant on solar panels.
"We're looking at other sources of energy consumption and trying to find new and efficient technologies to be able to reduce our consumption but at the present time it's a pretty difficult and expensive thing to do.
"Completing major building works doesn't happen overnight. We're looking at how we can increase commercial income through what we call second gate income next year with some additional things that are going on in the zoo next summer.
"However, it's going to take a bit of time so we are concerned about what's going to happen in 2023."
The rise in the cost of living has also been putting the squeeze on the zoo's budget for 2023.
The CEO said things were "pretty tight at the moment" and that the zoo is having to look at ways to cut costs "where we possibly can".
He added: "We will make sure that the customer experience is first class as it always is but we're going to have to find new ways to make things as efficient as possible while maintaining our world class visitor attraction status."
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