Taronga Western Plains Zoo hosts upward of 25,000 visitors during the July school holiday period

The zoo hosted more than 25,000 visitors during the three week school holiday period. Zoo director Steve Hinks said visitation numbers first spiked in June when COVID restrictions relaxed with the majority of guests coming from Sydney and broader NSW.

"Taronga Western Plain Zoo accommodation was fully booked out at the Zoofari Lodge and Savannah Cabins well in advance of the school holiday period and we opened several additional dates across the holidays at Billabong Camp," he said.

Orange resident Tracey Prisk visited the zoo along with family members from Sydney and said although they enjoyed their time at the zoo, they noticed a lack of social distancing and sanitiser at the facility last week.

Ms Prisk said she thought the zoo would benefit from employing more staff to enforce restrictions to improve social distancing measures.

"The weather was perfect, the animals were great. We love coming to the zoo as often as possible. Staff were lovely, but there simply weren't enough of them," Ms Prisk said.

"While I knew the zoo would be busy during the school holidays, and we obviously booked our tickets in advance, we were surprised at the number of people who were clearly not aware, or willing to adhere to, social-distancing rules."

But Mr Hinks said any organisation would find challenges with hosting more than 25,000 visitors. He said steps had been taken to ensure guests were managed responsibly and safely. First and foremost was moving to an online-only ticketing and registration system to monitor the visitor numbers, while keeping track of where they're from and their contact details.

Ms Prisk said there was also a noticeable lack of sanitiser stations during her visit and the ones she encountered were "all empty".

Mr Hinks said the zoo spends upwards of $300 a day on sanitizer, and checks refills are made two to three times a day, but supplies are used at a rapid pace.

"When we are that busy it is extremely difficult to keep up, not only were we rostering staff to be out in grounds to attempt to keep up with those demands, but all of our management team were out on grounds," Mr Hinks said.

"I can assure you, we were doing the absolute best that we can in that space, and with a site of over 300 hectares that is absolutely a challenge that we do rely on our quests to adhere to the rules themselves.

What we have learned from this is that maybe we need to put up signage with a contact number so that if you have experience with sanitiser stations being low you can let us know."

Mr Hinks said it had been a "complicated time" to operate but the zoo had learnt a lot of lessons they would implement for the next holiday period.