What happened to the Museum Industry?

You might know the old saying, "if your dog has a wagging tail, it means he is happy." A wagging tail tells us much more than your dog's happiness, but for the sake of this argument, let's stick with this notion.

This article doesn't deal with pets or our love of dogs, but with the implication of tail wags on social behavior. I find it relevant also in the case of our society's moral level.

In particular, I intend to address the cultural indications of our morals by looking at the state of world museums. As people exit the Covid19 crisis, so is their tendency to participate in cultural activities, enjoy leisure time and pay attention to other things rather than worry and desperation.?

I believe that one of the behavioral indications for recovering from the crisis is the number of visits to museums. Museums had to adapt to the new normal and adopt new channels for engagement with the people, especially young people.

The significant change to working and living practices in our lifetime has been the introduction of digital utility to museums and heritage institutions. Although there have been significant challenges, there have also been positive outcomes.

One interesting report by the Ulster University Museums (https://www.ulster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/1114273/MCC_MuseumsCovidDigitial-Media_Briefing_15Mar.pdf) focused on how museums can contribute to community resilience and wellbeing in times of crisis.

Museums have expanded their digital offer since restrictions of lockdowns, including social media presence, online lectures, digital exhibitions, and school and outreach sessions delivered remotely. This 'blended' approach allows museums to reach various audiences with different accessibility needs.

Museums need to gather new data to support their digital work, and the pandemic has given some museums the skills they need to reach new audiences. The transition to blended working felt in the early stages of the pandemic, with potential impacts on the health and wellbeing of staff. Staff absences due to Covid-19 are causing concern that museums are at capacity and are being pushed to exhaustion by the need to maintain digital content.

It is crucial to provide existing staff with ongoing training and support in digital skills and that museums explore creative ways of collaborating across sectors to support digital. By taking new forms, digital experiences can provide in-depth and sensory experiences for audiences. Research shows that museum staff is looking for support to develop methods to evaluate digital engagement with their museums.

A sensory experience is essential for museums to support health and wellbeing, and virtual tours can provide this experience. However, digital content must consider the end-user. It may require building an ecosystem of digital skills. Digital platforms may not replace the spontaneity and connection of in-person work, but museums gained additional positive reach through digital content.

Ulster's University museum briefing provides short insights into the opportunities, developments, and challenges associated with using digital technologies in the museum sector. Collaborative practice, high-quality research, and well-directed funding provision are required.

Analyzing the visits to world museums during 2019-2021 reveals a sad picture of a massive reduction in visits on 2020-2021 compared to 2019. Based on Statista data (Most visited museums worldwide 2020 | Statista), it is evident that the world's most attractive museums have suffered from loss of visitors, hence loss of income, maintenance, qualified staff, etc.

The following image, taken from Statista, refers to the top visited museums in the world. The decrease in visits is significant. We might have expected some indications of recovery over 2021, but the data shows we are still on the low edge of visits. The 2022 data is not fully available at the moment, but the optimists might predict better numbers at the end of this year.

To conclude this article, these past three years have been hard for the museum industry. Leisure activities among them, visiting museums, halted almost immediately, thus causing heavy cultural and financial loss to society and museums. The recovery from the crisis forced museums to look for new engagement channels to encourage people, especially young people, to renew their interest in museums and heritage.???

That might be the right place to mention the 'Chance' element in Michael Porter's Diamond Model, in which a significant event affects the entire industry and wipes out the companies' competitive advantages. In my opinion, the museum industry stands just at this point and needs to rebuild competitive edges from scratch. It might be the right time to use the services of Webintelligency for a better understanding of the market trend, a better understanding of the prospective visitors' tendencies and habits, and outcompete other leisure facilities that fight for the visitors' attention, time, and money.