engleski

The role of special event in attracting museum visitors and popularizing museums

Purpose - This paper aims to address and analyze the role which special event (more specifically “The Night of Museums”) has in promoting and increasing museum visitation, and consequently in changing attitude towards museums among visitors. This is especially challenging in Eastern European Countries (like Croatia) where the majority of population “avoids” museums. Only 35% of Croatian citizens visited museums (in 2017), which is below EU 28 average of 50%. Some reasons are related to the rise of popularity of different forms of entertainment in cultural and creative industries, but also with ignoring market needs. Domestic visitors represent a potentially important market for the first-time and repeat visitations, which need to be explored. A special event can be crucial in promoting museums and creating positive change in a society by changing attitudes towards museums as a part of tourism and destination offer. Methodology – The paper uses qualitative methodology, with the aim of obtaining insights into role of special events (“The Night of Museums”) for popularizing museums. In-depth interviews with five museum professionals responsible for organizing “The Night of Museums” events were conducted. To gain additional insights into the research problem, web and social media mentions of two official hashtags (#nocmuzeja and #nocmuzeja2019) were tracked in a period of about one month. Findings - Results of the in-depth interviews show that organizing “The Night of Museums” event is often a very challenging task because of security issues, museums' physical limitations and lack of expert personnel. Managers also worry about how hundreds or even thousands of visitors can easily “consume” museum experience. If appropriately organized, a special event can help museums to reach better their domestic audience, because it contributes to higher visibility of museums and their popularity. Majority of museums offers additional programs for “The Night of Museums” event. Additionally, the results of the analysis of web and social media mentions show an increase mentioning of “The Night of Museums” event during the days around the event. Surprisingly, results show that the most important channel for “The Night of Museums” event is predominantly - Instagram. Contribution - To our knowledge, this paper is the first that analyses the role of the special event (“The Night of Museums”) from the perspective of museum professionals. It demonstrates the importance of the event in popularization of museum visitation in the frame of the tourism activities of domestic visitors, which might be practiced throughout the year, regardless of the tourist season. Also, we prove that special events like “The Night of Museums” can be a powerful tool in creating positive change in society, by changing habits of museum visitation.

museums ; special event ; “The Night of Museums” ; qualitative research ; Croatia

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