Wildlands Zoo in Emmen will make a profit of 1.3 million euros in 2021. This is evident from the annual accounts, which were published this week. The park attracted 516,000 visitors that year, half the normal number of visitors due to the corona crisis.
“These have been very crazy years,” says director Erik van Engelen. “It was a full corona year in which we had half the number of visitors we had before in a regular year. There are three reasons why the figures are good: We had a very good summer in 2021, in which we had a maximum of five thousand visitors per day, which we also received every day in the park.”
“The second reason is that we continue to keep costs well under control. Spending was also good in that year,” continues the director. “In addition, we were able to make use of a number of schemes from the ministry. That means that we are financially very well off in a very difficult year.”
The zoo could make good use of the corona arrangements from The Hague. “If you add it all up, it amounts to millions of euros. That is a very important part of the result.”
The results for 2022 look good so far, according to Van Engelen: “What I can say about that is that we are doing very well on budget, both in terms of visitor numbers and turnover. We have set a lot of things in motion in recent years, and that’s now paying off in revenue per visitor As it looks now but the year isn’t quite over yet we’re going to do better than forecast And to think that we’re still closed for the first three weeks of January because when the lockdown was still in force.”
Until July 2022, Wildlands had a postponement of repaying the loans that the municipality. provided to the park. The current account, the extent to which the zoo can be ‘red’ with the municipality of Emmen, totaling 13 million euros, will remain open for a year longer. Namely until June 2023, according to the annual figures.
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