Attractions Management Issue 1 2011 - TourismInsights

Q
he times are changing for UK
museums. Behind the headlines,
we’re seeing a profound move
away from a culture of dependency on
public subsidy and towards a sector that’s
built around innovation and enterprise.
Museums can help the UK back onto its
feet, not just by helping bolster the national
tourist economy, but by supporting local
economies and promoting domestic tourism
and local ethical commerce.
Museums are increasingly effective in
using cross-platform media, including the
web and print, to drive audience share and
to create longer-term opportunities for revenue
generation, such as loyalty schemes
and cross selling of merchandise and content.
Following the collapse in demand for
niche commercial image libraries, museums
are moving from selling single-use
pictures to taking a more commercial view
on merchandising and cross-promotion,
both with each other and with other forms
of leisure attraction, even making use of
platforms such as Flickr and Wikipedia to
reach new and non-traditional audiences.
In the online world, museums
have realised that there is equity
in their brand, and that they can
control this equity to create both
value and revenue. Take, for example,
the recent collaboration with
the BBC’s A History of the World
in 100 Objects, which brought the
curatorial authority of the British Museum
to millions of consumers through iTunes.
Museums are emerging from 10 years of
public subsidy stronger than ever, and are
ready to face the challenges that lie ahead.
Instead of looking back to the old business
models, they’re looking ahead with both
creativity and imagination.
he UK’s worthy social gesture of
free admissions, intended to
deliver culture to the masses, by
attracting “lower” socio-economic groups
and minorities to museums, has been a
costly failure. While admissions did
increase on average 128 per cent between
2001 and 2010, this was an increase in the
number of visits, not the actual visitors.
Lacking income from admissions,
museums have focused on charged temporary
exhibitions, events and trading,
which diverts from their core purposes.
This costs about £70m (83m, $109m)
a year from the DCMS’s (Department
for Culture, Media and Sport) withered
budget; a vast sum, compared, for example,
with VisitBritain’s grant of £25m
(29.5m, $39m) for worldwide promotion.
DCMS says this benefits tourism by
“investing in the product”, yet most overseas
visitors expect to pay.
I strongly favour national museums
being available free for all – but in a
managed way. They should admit educational
groups free, and retain
free access for UK residents on
selected days and at times of
the year. But, most of the time,
and therefore for most visitors,
normal charges should be re-introduced.
And charges should be
varied by time, or visitor category,
to manage demand.
Then, most of the £70m could be spent
on promoting our great museums through
tourism marketing budgets for domestic
and inbound visitors. But enough funding
should be retained, say £15m (17.7m,
$23.3m), for targeted proactive schemes
and incentives to draw in the key new audiences
that the simplistic “free” policy has
failed to attract – free of charge, of course.
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AM 1 2011 ©cybertrek 2011