Whether a thing is hot or not, just see if the scalper hits it.
Nowadays, scalpers, the vane of popularity, "blow" train tickets, concerts, and Internet celebrity restaurants...... It fell on the museum. Free tickets to some famous museums have reached the level of a strange commodity, and sometimes they are even sold for thousands of yuan a piece.
"It's either at the museum or on the way to the museum." It can be seen from the data: during the May Day holiday in 2024, the number of ticket bookings and reservations for key museums across the country increased by 406% year-on-year, and the average daily number of visitors to major museums almost reached the upper limit.
There are more people, and sweet troubles are coming. Tourists' complaints and doubts about the museum are gradually increasing: it is difficult to make an appointment, "visiting a museum is comparable to grabbing a train ticket"; People are crowded, the exhibits can't be seen, "I don't know whether to look at people or cultural relics"; I spent money and energy, and finally I looked at the flowers and forgot about it.
From "Internet celebrity" to "real red", it is time for the museum to plan well, how to take over this "splashing traffic"?
When museums become "top stream"
The number of visitors to the museum didn't increase overnight.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the cause of culture and museums has been highly valued In 2023, there will be 6,565 registered museums nationwide, an increase of 69.8% over 2012, and more than 90% of them are free of charge. From 2012 to 2022, the central government has invested more than 100 billion yuan in cultural relics protection, which has significantly improved the hardware facilities of various museums.
The media also helped. From programs such as "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", "If National Treasures Could Talk" and "National Treasures" have set off a boom in cultural and object appreciation, to last year's "Angry Birds" and "Speechless Bodhisattvas" became popular on social media, and now, visiting museums with "friends" has become a new way for young people to socialize.
On the other hand, the operation of the museum has abandoned the traditional idea of "the aroma of wine is not afraid of the depth of the alley". Forbidden City Calendar, Cultural Relics Ice Cream, Archaeological Blind Box, Jade Pendant Lollipop, Four Gods Cloud Refrigerator Magnet, "Horse Stepping on Feiyan" Doll, Escape Room, "Night at the Museum", ...... A variety of creative products and activities connect traditional culture with modern life, and have become eye-catching tools for major museums.
In addition, with the help of digital technology, the museum's artifacts also play "rap". Taking the Hunan Museum as an example, Jiang Wei introduced that with the assistance of 5G, VR, AR, holographic images and other technologies, visitors can face to face with cultural relics more vividly and immersively. ”
It can be said that the development of the cultural and museum industry so far, the "cultural and museum fever" is the expected result.
Most importantly, "there has been a change in the perception of museums, and there is a growing sense of audience-centricity. I started curating with my heart and really wondered what a valuable and meaningful exhibition would look like. Yin Kai, an associate professor at the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Shandong University, said.
"From the perspective of the whole society, the cultural needs of mainland society are constantly escalating, and the concept of cultural tourism consumption has shifted from the original tourism to the pursuit of deep spiritual culture." Li Taiheng, Ph.D. from the Department of Cultural Relics and Museology at Fudan University, believes that museums are becoming more and more effective in meeting the needs of mass cultural consumption, not only as a place to preserve and restore cultural relics, but also as a place for people to study and research, visit and play, and enjoy leisure and entertainment.
Sweet annoyances
Professor Guo Yanli, deputy director of the Education Museum at Shaanxi Normal University, believes that "it is a welcome phenomenon that more people are paying attention to and entering the museum", "but it is also a double-edged sword", she added.
After all, the number of people that can accommodate a venue is limited, and even if the museum releases all the places for visitors, there will always be people who can't make reservations. In August last year, the Shaanxi History Museum had an average daily carrying capacity of 12,000 people, but more than 600,000 people booked tickets per day.
In fact, the museum has worked hard to receive.
According to Jiang Wei, deputy director of the Hunan Museum's open management department, the Hunan Museum will extend its closing time to 8 p.m. on holidays, with 5,000 more visitors and 20,000 visitors per day, twice as many as in 2019. "Our employees are all 'white and black' and '5+2', and we hope to meet the needs of visitors as much as possible."
Still, the unprecedented flow of people inevitably poses challenges to the museum's operations.
The most important thing is safety, including the safety of cultural relics and the safety of audiences.
"The flow of people is large, and the probability of mass events is greatly increased, especially in the face of some unforeseen natural disasters or emergencies, the mechanism and plan of emergency avoidance are more important." Guo Yanli emphasized.
In addition, the quality of the museum's service is inevitably compromised.
Specially come to "check in" but can't grab tickets, "scalpers" scalping at high prices, long queues at the door to stand numb legs, official commentators are in short supply, unofficial explanations are uneven, audio guides are rented, guide QR codes can't be scanned, long queues at the door of the toilet, noisy people are crowded around, children chase and play and no one cares......
"Uncomfortable visiting experience and discounted museum services will cause discomfort to the audience, and will soon cause aesthetic fatigue to the museum," Guo Yanli said, adding that negative feedback from the audience should be taken seriously.
Moreover, Li Taiheng also observed that under the trend of "cultural and museum fever" continuing to heat up, museums are also under greater pressure from public opinion, "The peak of visitor flow is superimposed on high attention, and even a small episode may cause dissatisfaction among the audience, which will then be projected to the entire museum and even the entire industry, which also greatly tests the museum's ability to deal with details." ”
Museums, how to respond?
In the future, under the trend of only a lot more visitors, how can we make tourists visit more smoothly and comfortably?
On the one hand, many museums are also quite helpless about the "difficulty in making reservations" commonly reported by tourists. "Our places are all given in full and without reservations." Jiang Wei introduced that the Hunan Museum is cooperating with payment platforms to optimize algorithms, block suspicious IP addresses, and crack down on scalping.
Diversion, peak staggering, and flow restriction - to disperse the flow of visitors in time and space to avoid crowding and concentration, these tasks need to be carried out by the museum in the pre-stage.
"Generally speaking, museums will predict the flow of visitors before the holidays, and inform the audience online in advance to remind the audience to travel off-peak." Guo Yanli believes that popular museums can also consider extending opening hours and booking admission by the hour. "For example, the Mausoleum Museum of the First Emperor of Qin will set up a long road from the door to the exhibition hall, which is also a way to divert traffic."
In order to solve the problem of insufficient carrying capacity, museums can optimize the layout in terms of space, such as adding branch museums, or renovating existing old venues. "Or open the way of thinking, let the cultural relics go out of the museum, through the cultural relics to the countryside, into the campus, into the community, into the grassroots, so that the audience can see it, no longer have to flock to a certain museum." Guo Yanli said.
In addition, Li Taiheng, Guo Yanli and other scholars mentioned that digital museums, online virtual exhibition halls, etc., can also be built to expand the boundaries of offline exhibitions, "Digital Dunhuang" and "Panoramic Forbidden City" are good examples.
On the other hand, in order to improve the noisy situation of museums, the management needs to strengthen security and guidance, formulate safety management systems and emergency plans, and maintain good order.
According to Jiang Wei, at the peak, there were more than 200 security personnel in the exhibition hall of the Hunan Museum; Each exhibition hall has a number of guides to stop tourists from running, jumping, lying and climbing, using flashing lights, making loud noises and other uncivilized behaviors in a timely manner; It will also use a story chain to connect each exhibition hall to attract the audience to move forward and avoid staying in front of a certain exhibition hall or cultural relics for too long and causing congestion.
"We should also pay more attention to special groups, such as the elderly and left-behind children, how to better meet their needs, and dig into the details, such as putting some magnifying glasses on the elderly, etc. In short, museums must preserve their purity and professionalism, have an open mind, work together with governments at all levels and all parties in society, attract elites from all walks of life, and work together to provide public services under the 'museum fever'. Guo Yanli said.
Tomorrow is International Museum Day, as the phrase in the guide of the Shaanxi Archaeological Museum says: let the past have the future. As the "cultural and museum fever" continues to heat up, how to provide a better visiting experience for museums is worth thinking about.
Source: CCTV