Museums...free admission

JDK · **Posted:** Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:08 pm

Bearcat SA wrote:

I dont know whether its a peculiar South African issue ... but as I understand it, if they do charge, it goes into the general South African Government fiscus ... and thus the Museum would not see the direct benefit anyway.

It's (unfortunately) not unique.

Just for the record, here's my response to the questionnaire posted in this thread:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showth ... p?t=112227

... on Key, the thread raising Tom's understandable original query. Bear in mind that funding models vary around the world, but in the West, it's not unusual for national collections to be state funded and sometimes to be obliged to offer some form of free entry. However there's no requirement I've ever been aware of for other museums (normally) to offer free entry.

Quote:

3. Do you charge admission?
This is a really interesting one. I worked at a (UK county) museum which charged a small admission for a period and was free entry for another period. The sociology of it was amazing, and absolute.

If you charge admission, it is a absolute 'hurdle' to entry; and people need to feel it's 'worthwhile' to pay - the amount, oddly, is almost completely irrelevant.

If you don't charge, you get people wandering in an out, which is great if you want to believe the absolute visitor numbers and ignore visitor satisfaction (have a survey - either permanent or regularly cyclic; ACT on the feedback.)

If you charge, you'll have fewer people come in, but they'll bloody well expect to see everything, in detail and engage much more - they want 'value for money'.

So your charge/no charge must have a direct link to visitor engagement expectation:
-- If there's no charge you can get away with more amateurish displays, but (most) people won't really engage with any depth, so you have to have attractive tempting displays.
-- If you do charge, people will expect quality and robust displays in data and engagement, and they'll be loud if they don't think you are hitting the standards.
- so in both scenarios you need to work hard, but in different ways.

If you charge, have special free or discount days.

If you charge, make the 'ticket' a keepsake that means they 'get' a permanent reminder of the visit. A bookmark or postcard (full colour, professionally printed) is ideal, with space for a stamp of date validity.

Have a return/or return with guest/friend option.

4. What are your charges/concessions etc?
If you go this route, ensure that there's a viable and simple to understand family rate, kids at a breakpoint (age) and a OAP rate - some (mostly non-UK) have a Veteran's concession.

If you have a 'free return within a year' option, it's easy, costs little/nothing and gives a warm feeling to everyone for a tiny actual take up.

Like other areas of human behaviour, what people say and what people do are very different things. Hence I thought some forum members might be interested in the observed reality in a case study of this contrast.

The whole thread on Key is worth a look in it's entirety, as is Tom's query there regarding 'free entry'.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showth ... p?t=112242

Regards,

Tom H · **Posted:** Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:32 pm

JDK wrote:

Tom, I think it fair to say you've put your museum on the Key and WIX maps very firmly, and for the right reasons. :wink:

Thanks JDK

We try very hard to provide to present the history of our region and make it fun and entertaining.

While I will never say it in our marketing the goal is to get people to come because it is exciting, fun and interesting....once we get them here we educate them and get them addicted...without them realizing it. (LOL)

Thanks to all that have responded to the thread and I appreciate the detail provided.

Hope one of these days to meet more of the WIX folks as those i have are all great people.

Tom

Django · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 12:14 pm

Great insight James. I find that very helpful in my limited dealings with increasing attendance at the Grissom Air Museum.

I agree that there should be some kind of admission charge. Is the thinking free admission will entice attendees to put more into the donation box?

Tom H · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:51 pm

Django wrote:

Great insight James. I find that very helpful in my limited dealings with increasing attendance at the Grissom Air Museum.

I agree that there should be some kind of admission charge. Is the thinking free admission will entice attendees to put more into the donation box?

As Executive Director and prior to that a volunteer at our museum for 15 years let me throw my insight at this for you.

Back in the early days the thought pushed forward was that "admission by donation" would provide more revenue than an admission charge and for several years that policy was followed.

Eventually when the facility grew to the point where a person needed to be hired a nominal admission charge was put into effect. Revenues tripled. Donations didn't change.

Over the years I have gone out of my way to bring up the topic with museums of all kinds, quite a few (non aviation) still doing admission by donation.

If you are a small museum, as an example a 1-2 room Civic museum, admission by donation seems to work. As soon as you break to a significant size (different type of museums have different break points here) it becomes impractical and the operation moves to an admission based system.

You need to be realistic and competitive but in at least the North American culture "admission by donation" to most non enthusiast/unconnected member of the general public "admission by donation" means free. And yes this is a very general comment and there are "few" that break the trend ether by a completely different business model or other circumstance.

Which is why I started the thread here and on the Key forum...to see if my findings over the years were wide spread and to get fresh input on a broader scale.

Tom

PS if you want to contact me direct for almost ANY information I would be happy to assist as I can and will do the same with any museum.

JDK · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:37 pm

Tom is quite right in his post above; my earlier point was the need for a different kind of response and management of the 'post entry experience' if you will depending on whether there was an entry charge or not. I wasn't advising as to apply a charge or not - that's a different and much more specifics dependant choice. However as a rule of thumb, given that's become the topic, charge entry, but make it attractive with freebees, returns etc.

In this post linked below, is an illustration of how in the case of a small museum donations can be smarter than an admission charge. However that is best though of as an exception as a result of scale (small) than a normal guide for larger operations and entry charges.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showpo ... stcount=32

(To put it in context, I was, frankly, amazed that people would dither about entering a museum for a negligible cost, but having handed over their smallest transaction of the week, they'd do EVERYTHING in the museum. Earlier, with free entry, they'd popped in, had a look at one or two galleries for half an hour, or while waiting for the bus.)

Regards,

Garth · **Posted:** Sat Oct 01, 2011 7:02 am

Tom H wrote:

Django wrote:

Eventually when the facility grew to the point where a person needed to be hired a nominal admission charge was put into effect. Revenues tripled. Donations didn't change.

As with just about everything else in life there are tradeoffs, as you and others have noted.

For instance, economic principles will show that there's a tipping point on what constitutes a "nominal" admission charge. As a museum approaches that tipping point (by raising the price of admission), the initial revenues will decline to the breakeven point. Move beyond that tipping point and the museum will actually be hurt - it will start LOSING revenue because of the lack of visitors.

Other elements that come into play are the revenues that can be generated through concessions, such as on-site food, the giftshop and other "premium" attractions (such as films, simulators, etc as applicable).

So one of the things that torques me off a lot is to see museum managers not really understanding their customer base or how to maximize revenue, and do really stupid things that hurt their revenue streams.

Anecdotal example: living in Northern Virginia, and close to Dulles Airport, my "local" aviation museum happens to be NASM Dulles. When they opened they charged a $12 per car (now $15 per car) parking fee. But they ALSO offered an annual parking pass for ~$50 (which went up slightly over the years, was tied for a while to a membership in the Air and Space Society)

This was a GREAT idea for them. Low cost to implement, good rate of return in terms of getting locals to come to the museum more often ... spending money on IMAX movies, the Subway concession (later the McDonalds one) and the gift shop.

I had one from opening day, and would go there a lot. It was the bad weather (rainy/hot/cold) destination with my kids, a place I'd take my out of town guests (fed my ego just a little to pull out the electronic card to get the gates to open), the bookstore I frequented most often and just the all around "thing to do" when I couldn't think of anything else close.

As a result I spent HUNDREDS of dollars every year there on books, movies, food (I always picked up two or three packages of "Astronaut Ice Cream" for my kids when there). And I had a fair number of friends in the area who did the same thing.

A few years back NASM did away with the parking permit program, and switched to bulk entry "stamps" (a little booklet of 5 or 6) instead. I didn't like the idea, because I saw it as very bad business. Result: NASM largely lost me as a paying customer, losing not only the revenues they certainly projected from my switching to the stamps (which I didn't do), but also from books (Amazon is cheaper, B&N can meet any impulse buy), food (plenty of nearby, and cheaper, McDonalds) and movies (there are two other IMAX theaters nearby - one in Manassas the other in Tysons that show first-run movies too ... AND I can bring popcorn and soda into the theater with me).

Tom H · **Posted:** Sat Oct 01, 2011 10:16 am

Garth

You bring up some excellent points, a couple I would like to address from my experience as a private not for profit/registered charitable museum.

1) You are absolutely right about tipping points!
Which I why I commented above that a museum has to be realistic about how it fits in the world and has to be competitive with similar attractions and even things like movies and attractions.

Like it or not we are competing for the (excluding enthusiasts and those already possesed by the aviation diesase) general public's discretionary spending dollar.
If you can't get them in you cannot educate them (don't tell them you are going to educate them or they are not going to show up at all) and they will never be a supporter.

But we also have to remember (at least by our mandate) we are not a business.
We are here to "promote, educate, collect and preserve" our history as we can't educate unless you come we do a number of things to be sure everyone gets a chance to come.

- Our admission charges are well below similar attractions in our area
- We have several free days per year such as Remembrance Day, Battle of Britain and a couple others.
- We have reduced admission events, less than 1/2 normal cost
and other programs for the disadvantaged, veterans etc.

So at some point during the year everyone gets a chance to be here. It's poor business but it is our duty and an important part of our mandate.

2) I do not believe you can gouge people.
Once in our guests have access to all parts of the museum at no extra charge
- interactives
- mini theaters
- aircraft entry programs
- public access similuators (there is a donation box here to help with maintenance)
- a acomputer area with educational and research tools
as well as more and parking is free.

Our gift shop prices are below most typical store operations and carries pretty much only products relevant to our history and the things you can't find elsewhere.

So in short, at least in our case, we have to act like a business, pay our bills like a business but we are not a business and have mandates to fill beyond what a private business does.

But we must fill our mandate / mission while remaining self sustaining and providing great customer service, value for the dollar at all levels.

Now this is my experience at our museum...different operations have different mandates, some are outright businesses...no two museums are the same. But we share many similar challenges.

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Museums...free admission

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