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Pet Porpoise Pool, a beautiful marine park in Coffs Harbour, NSW. Pet Porpoise Pool provides visitors with an educational, hands-on experience connecting them with a variety of marine animals. Already a multi award winning tourist attraction, they added to over a dozen awards since 2006 by becoming the first inductee of the Coffs Harbour’s Chamber of Commerce Business Awards Hall of Fame in 2010. They achieved this recognition by winning the coveted annual award for three consecutive years in the Tourism and Recreation category.
Paige Sinclair, Chief Executive Officer, shares her insights on running a successful business, the importance of being a member of NSW Business Chamber and what keeps her awake at night…
What recent business achievements, successes or wins have helped grow your business or raised your profile locally, nationally or overseas?
This year has been a challenging year for everyone with weather conditions and other natural disasters affecting many regions in Australia and the world. Visitor numbers have dropped in our area for a number of reasons; the Australian dollar is making overseas travel affordable and exciting to many, while the cost of living makes it difficult for others to travel at all, especially those affected by the floods, cyclones or other events. But, while visitor numbers have fallen significantly in our area by as much as 19% or more, we have been able to retain our revenue base.
Planning began this time last year to introduce a number of new services and products that would add and build to the already exciting lineup of ‘Animal Experiences’. Effectively, we were able to more than double our Animal Experiences inventory by restructuring the products, by slightly decreasing the time in the water and providing more time slots for these special and unique ‘in the water encounters’ with both our dolphins and seals without increasing the workloads of the animals.
We created two new products, the most popular being Meet the Babies, where participants were able to spend fifteen minutes each with two of our youngest animals, Jet the dolphin and Miri the Australian sea lion. Participants were able to interact with Jet poolside while he was put through his training paces by his handler and Miri, our budding artist (pictured), painted each participant a masterpiece under the guidance of her trainer!
The Onshore Seal Encounter was designed for families with members younger than six years of age. In this animal interaction, our guests meet three different seals and are able to learn about these animals and enjoy plenty of pats, kisses and photo opportunities.
This year, as in the past, the Pet Porpoise Pool was very active in the field of research, working with five different Universities on different projects. One of which included an analysis of neonate dolphin vocalizations. Hydrophones were used to collect dolphin vocalizations before, during, and immediately after the birth, as well as at various periods over a year in the life of Jet, our baby dolphin. Jet was born here at the park in December 2009. Behaviours were simultaneously recorded to see if there was any correlation between the vocalizations recorded and the behaviours conducted. While the collection of data is now complete, it is still being interpreted and analyzed. When the scientific paper is published, it will be of interest both nationally and internationally with numerous marine mammal specialists, biologists and academics.
What NSW Business Chamber services or products have you used and how have these helped your business?
We have used the Award Subscription service and Workplace Advice line to help us keep abreast of all the changes to the employment laws, like Fair Work Australia and the changeover to modern awards. These services have saved us hours and hours of work, particularly at the introduction to the Modern Awards and as we navigated through the process. The Workplace Advice line gives advice on any employment issues plus free consultations with workplace lawyers, which has helped us considerably with interpretation of the Modern Awards. The NSW Business Chamber website has a host of resources available for members and we have used the templates for workplace contracts, allowing us to modify these documents to suit out needs and the business.
How has your membership of NSW Business Chamber enhanced your business activities?
Being a member has provided our business with access to experts in fields that, as a small to medium sized business, we cannot afford to have on the payroll, particularly in the areas of Industrial Relations, OHS and other compliance issues. As a member, we were able to take advantage of a program with Enterprise Connect, a federally funded grant program that helped us develop and write a Strategic Plan and Business Action Plan. This process introduced us to a business consultant who was tailor-made to help us with this process. As a result of the Strategic Plan, we have gone on to develop a Master Plan and conduct a feasibility study on the re-development of the park, a process we will need to take in the near future.
Is there anything in the business world that is keeping you awake at night?
I have a number of concerns that on occasion have made getting a good night’s sleep difficult! The decreasing numbers of day trippers and overnight visitors to our region, the rising price of electricity and the Modern Awards recently introduced. With regard to declining visitor numbers, I believe that as the economy recovers from the GFC there will be an opportunity for business like ourselves, who have had difficult trading periods, to capitalize on all the cost saving measures and revenue increasing initiatives put in place. I think that rising electricity costs are here to stay. We are currently looking at a re-development of the park and we will need to be clever in the way in which we do this, by utilising the best sustainable practices available. Finally, the Modern Awards which are difficult to interpret and have contributed to hundreds of hours of additional work, high wage costs and confused/disgruntled employees. They say ‘no pain, no gain’, so let’s hope the latter is not true. However, on a positive note, as alluded to earlier, NSW Business Chamber helped us make the transition as painless as possible and we really appreciate the support we get.
Is there anything in the business world that is exciting you?
Absolutely - new marketing technologies like some of the travel apps for mobile phones. These are going to give us additional opportunities to connect with potential customers and returning guests for free or a modest cost. Additionally, these travel apps will be able to help us capture potential guests in our area who are travelling independently and have not made definite travel plans, by marketing directly to them. Social media and mobile websites also offer exciting marketing opportunities.
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