The Living Desert Zoo & Gardens

About This Project

The Living Desert, a 2000 acre zoo and botanical garden attraction, located in Palm Desert, CA. retained Pulse Group professionals to assist them in developing a market analysis and development plan for a themed restaurant, specialty retail and group entertainment facility planned as part of their new African section. The facility planned as a “Heart of Africa” style Safari Lodge is to be located in a watering hole type setting surrounded by live animals. As part of our work we undertook a detailed evaluation of similar facilities associated with other attractions nationally, evaluated other non-hotel group entertainment facilities in the Palm Desert market area and conducted survey research with residents, visitors and meeting planners with respect to their potential use of the facility. Based on our work we were able to estimate demand for the proposed facility and make a number of recommendations with respect to the size of the facility, design elements and marketing strategies. In addition, we developed representative stabilized year operating proformas for three different development scenarios.