The 2014 season has been over at Discovery Wildlife Park since the end of the Thanksgiving long weekend but the zoo is rejoicing with a glorious aftermath.
Discovery Wildlife Park was awarded a Travel Alberta Alto Award on Oct. 20 for its commitment to service excellence. The zoo won over co-finalists Alpine Village Cabin Resort in Jasper and Edmonton's Northlands.
The Alto Award recognizes the park for delivering outstanding customer service to its visitors, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders.
It's the third time the Innisfail zoo has won an Alto Award from Travel Alberta, the provincial government tourism-marketing agency that was established as a Crown corporation in 2009.
In previous years the park won in the marketing excellence and sustainable tourism categories but this year's award is a first for customer service.
“Discovery Wildlife Park goes the extra mile for their customers by providing unique amenities like golf cart rentals and a special family room for parents with babies,” said Debbie Olsen, media relations specialist for Travel Alberta. “They even offer weather guarantees. If it's too sunny or too rainy, guests can request a rain check and come back another day.
“Receiving an Alto Award is a tremendous honour for any organization and Doug Bos and Debbie Rowland, owners of the park, could not be more pleased,” she added. “Alto Awards recognize individuals and organizations committed to enriching Alberta's tourism industry and who by their actions inspire others and demonstrate what can be achieved by working together.”
Bos said he was honoured with the award, and that it was the most important one he has earned from Travel Alberta.
“For me it is a pretty big deal because it is provincewide, not just an isolated area,” said Bos. “Customer service is huge amongst all tourist places. When you are up against all the big hotels, heritage parks and all these people for customer service I just feel it is a more prestigious award.”
Bos also said this month's Alto Award adds to his feeling of success for the past season, noting the zoo was able to maintain the 30 per cent increase in attendance it was able to pick up in 2013, the year of the Great Flood that devastated the Calgary Zoo. He said Discovery Wildlife Park was able to pick up a huge increase in attendance last year but was concerned it would drop off in 2014.
“We didn't expect to maintain that,” said Bos. “Some of the key weekends we count on, like the July weekend, had some real bad weather. And there were others where our numbers were not great because of weather but despite all that we managed to maintain our 30 per cent increase which we are quite happy with.”
Discovery Wildlife Park is open daily from May 1 to mid-October annually. The zoo's website is at discoverywildlifepark.com.
