2023-08-01 13:02:59
The future of public museums is 4.0. If the system introduced 4.0 tools and logic, digitizing the visitor experience, optimizing rates and expanding the offer of available services, revenues could increase between 44% and 66%. Indicating a new economic horizon for Italian museum heritage is the study “Public museums, a strategic heritage for the Italian system” carried out by The European House – Ambrosetti in collaboration with Aditus. The analysis shows that the entire system of Italian public museums in 2019, the record year before the decline recorded during the pandemic, generated 242.4 million euros in revenues from admissions. A figure that has grown by 10.8% year on year since 2012, but which is equivalent to the sum of the revenues of just 5 of the most visited museums and monuments in Europe (Musée du Louvre, Tour Eiffel and Musee d’Orsay in France and Nacional del Prado and the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain). Not to mention the large differences in performance between the various areas of the country, with 84% of revenues concentrated in just three regions: Lazio, Campania and Tuscany. According to the analysts of The European House – Ambrosetti, the public museum system “could be a driving force for the country’s development, thanks to an economic and employment multiplier effect that would allow the activation of 237 euros distributed across all economic sectors for every 100 euros invested in museum and cultural activities and 1.5 employed outside the sector for each job created within it”. But, analysts warn, “a change of pace is needed”. To strengthen the competitiveness of public museums and support their development “it is necessary to restore centrality to the visitor and invest in expanding the offer of museum and cultural services, integrating additional products and the digital channel in the museum visit experience, monitoring over time the level of visitor satisfaction, introducing new management logics and digital communication and marketing methods, new skills and dynamic prices”.
“Museums represent a widespread asset of the country on which to build a driving force for the creation of qualified employment, with economic repercussions for the benefit of Italy. Museums are evolving in their function, increasingly integrating the territorial and social dimension for local communities” comments Lorenzo Tavazzi, Partner and Head of the Scenarios and Intelligence Area of The European House – Ambrosetti. “There are development opportunities – explains Tavazzi – in intercepting the new demand for culture through multi-channel relationship methods with visitors, digitization and the increase in the experiential offer and services. To enable this vision it is necessary to act through the completion of the path of autonomy and the enhancement of public-private collaboration”. “In a scenario of growing evolution and acceleration, the public-private partnership is essential for an expansion of services and greater flexibility focused on the visitor’s user experience, to accompany the evolution of Museums in a 4.0 key” added Riccardo Ercoli, president of Aditus. “In the ‘museum of the future’, the role of the virtuous concessionaire will increasingly translate – observed Ercoli – into the ability to develop, offer and manage integrated services (such as guided tours, workshops, exhibitions and temporary exhibitions, online activities) and make available experiential services that can meet the new needs of Italian and foreign visitors, promoting the full use of cultural heritage even in smaller and lesser-known museums.This must be done by paying particular attention to the technological and digital dimension, sustainability and staff training of the Museums”.
According to the ‘numbers’ that outline the geography of Italian museums, despite the fact that the revenues of state museums grew at a good pace between 2012 and 2019, according to the study by The European House – Ambrosetti they are still limited compared to the main European countries. There is great growth potential emerging from the study: 37% of state and 45% of public non-state entities are completely free to enter (average of 44%), and 51% of visitors to state and public bodies is free of charge, with particularly high values in state entities (58%). The museum heritage in Italy is distributed throughout the territory, but the attraction performances are very different. Eight regions out of twenty, analysts point out, have reduced the number of cultural institutions, Lazio with 7% of the national heritage attracts a quarter of the total annual visitors to Italy and the vast majority of revenues are concentrated in just three regions (Lazio with 87 .3 million euros, Campania with 60.2 million and Tuscany with 55.2 million), while there are few that have increased both visitors and revenues (Campania, Marche and Basilicata). Tuscany (54% of the regional total), Veneto (52%) and Lazio (50%) are the regions with the highest incidence of foreign visitors to cultural institutes.
In this context, therefore, digital technologies can facilitate the expansion of the offer of museum services and improve the visitor’s user experience, but Italian museums still appear to be behind in the adoption of these tools. Yet less than a third of museums in Italy (31.2%) offer visitors videos and/or touch screens for descriptions and in-depth analysis of the works; only 27.5% are equipped with QR Codes and/or proximity systems in the structures (WiFi), less than one museum out of five provides applications for tablets and smartphones, just over 1 museum out of 5 (22.4 %) is equipped with multimedia supports (e.g. interactive installations, virtual reconstructions, augmented reality). Furthermore, 34.8% of museums have not yet digitized the assets on public display and 37.8% have not yet digitized the assets kept in archives. Just over 1 in 5 museums organize online conferences, lectures and seminars or online virtual tours. 37% of cultural institutes in Italy are not yet present on the web with their own dedicated site, while online ticketing is present in only 1 institution out of 5. Finally, half of the cultural institutions do not have any resources dedicated to digital study. (by Andreana d’Aquino)
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