Page 714 - MARSIUM'21 COMP OF PAPER

693 Nurul Hafiza (2022)

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Zoo is a place where wild animals and domesticated animals are publicly displayed for people attraction which in the other name, they
called it as a zoological garden or zoological park. In the zoo, the animals can be treated with intensive care than in nature reserves or even
in sanctuaries. Nowadays, zoo has been specifically grouping its animal into particular group instead of naturally placing them freely like in
a jungle. For instance, primates (group of mammals such as lemurs, monkeys and apes), big cats (large members of the cat family such as
tiger, lion, puma, cheetah and leopard), tropical birds (such as parrots, hornbill and eagle) or waterfowl (such as ducks, geese and swans).
Meanwhile, the marine species are located in big aquariums such as fishes and marine mammals (Britannica, 2020).

Zoo is being modernized where they are not only for visiting the animals or for entertainment purpose, but for other purposes also. For
instance, education, research, conservation and recreation purpose (Rose et al, 2019). Few years back then, zoo has become an education
place where they cooperated with the educational authorities in order to provide educational program to kids and students (Britannica, 2020).
To be precise, around 30 years ago, there has been changes of educating people about conservation of nature wildlife within zoos in order to
avoid the extinction of wildlife. There are many zoos provided and offered varieties of opportunities to educate the visitors about habitat
conservation through programs and activities (McElroy, 2015).

Tourism is where people stay away from their home to enjoy leisure and having business outside their office that is not more than one
consecutive year. Based on the statistics in Association of Zoos & Aquariums in United States (2021) (https://www.aza.org/zoo-and-
aquarium-statistics?locale=en), they served more than 200 million annual visitors worldwide whereas 183 million in the United States.
Meanwhile, around 50 million children visit with their families annually and around 12 million students on field trips visit the zoo annually.
Furthermore, to ensure the customers keep on visiting more often, the zoo must focus of its membership program. Customers tend to purchase
the membership card because they wanted to keep on coming to enjoy the benefits in the membership card and from there, zoo can build
their relationship in a long term. Customers always seek for better deals, always demanding, share or write their reviews from a form of
survey or on social media or even on the zoo’s official website based on they experienced at the zoo (Koo et al, 2020).

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Ever since the pandemic COVID-19 strikes last year on March 2020 around the world, New Straits Times by Nuradzimmah (2020)
(https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2020/12/649305/local-tourism-sector-has-suffered-rm100-billion-losses-due-pandemic) has reported
that Malaysia local tourism sector faces huge loss and suffered RM100 billion in losses. Zoological Park is one of the tourism sectors and it
is in the brink of collapse. Zoo Negara is no exception as they also are suffering due to this pandemic. Zoo Negara relies on fundraising to
cover their expenses because of the restriction and social distancing. Based on The Star article by Agency (2020)
(https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2020/12/19/zoos-on-the-brink-of-collapse-during-pandemic), they reported that many zoos
from Europe, UK, Germany, Berlin, Poland and many zoos had relied on public donations to cover the financial crisis, while Ireland had
relied on ticket sales by 90% of its funding as they needed to close down the zoo due to government restriction. This shows that many people
might not come to visit because of pandemic and the zoos will get lesser visitors as well as their loyal visitors who subscribed on their
memberships program.

To be concluded, Zoo Negara needs to raise their funds through their sales ticketing, fund raising and improving their membership
card so they can attract the visitors back to come and visit the animals with lots of new attributes. ZooKu Membership Card has been lacking
with benefits and membership plan since 2019 compared with another zoological park in the world.

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