Museums

This time we focus on Museums as the sector of Tourism industry and the importance of providing more qualitative service in Museums in order to increase the visitor numbers. Museums have an essential position in post-industrial society. Excluding their roles in the cultural and educational sectors, Museums make an important contribution to the economic sector. As Museums have raised their profile in the last decade, they also face the pressure from the public, increasing competition from both the leisure and museum markets, and changes in customers' attitudes. The quality of service is thus an increasingly important subject. There are some 2,500 Museums in the UK, 1300 of which are in the independent sector. Though independent Museums may receive grant aid, they do not have the guarantee of local author ity support; many need income from admissions and sales to survive.

These Museums therefore need to pay great attention to quality service to create an advantage and attract more visitors in a competitive world. The Cambridge & County Folk Museum, like many independent Museums, is facing decreasing visitor numbers and changes of leisure patterns. As it enters the next millennium, the Museum is preparing for a period of major redevelopment. The service quality of the Museum therefore needs to be investigated. This study is intended to provide some useful suggestions for the Folk Museum's redevelopment through interviews and self-completion questionnaire research. The result may also benefit other Museums of the same size and situation. The Cambridge & County Folk Museum, like other independent Museums, faces decreasing numbers of visitors and increasing competition from both the museum and other leisure sectors. As the Museum has entered the new millennium and prepares its redevelopment, it is necessary to review the quality of service the Museum provides. The aim of this study is to investigate whether or not the Museum delivers quality service to external customers by means of conducting surveys of audiences, visitors and staff. As the outcomes of the potential audience and current visitor questionnaires illustrate, visitor assessment of the Museum's service quality is generally higher than audience expectations in most determinants of service quality, especially in the dimensions which relate the performance of staff/volunteers that have contact with visitors. When visitors evaluated the experiences of their visit in the Museum, some respondent visitors were more tolerant of certain determinants of service quality, due to the Museum's size and physical environment (a historic building).

Many respondents prefer a museum to provide a cafe or restaurant, but said it is not necessary for Museums of this size. Although the stairs were not safe for some respondents, they did not suggest the Museum rebuilds them, because of the building listed status. The biggest gap in internal staff questionnaires is that the Museum does not have enough resources and personnel to meet users' requirements. Taken as a whole, the outcomes of this research project reflect that there is no serious gap in the processes of delivering service; the Folk Museum provides good quality service to its visitors. The reasons for the decline of visitor numbers may stem from the overall increasing competition in the leisure sector, the shorter leisure time audiences have, or through not enough communication to the public to give them attractive images of the Museum, such as suggesting it is a place where they can spend time with friends and family, have fun, find interesting... etc. Although a high proportion of visitors attended the Museum because of word-ofmouth, the Folk Museum needs to do more about creating other attractive methods of communication and promotion with public.

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Author:: Mary Anne Winslow
Keywords:: Museums, Tourism
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