Estimating Museum Attendance
Robert Russell
[Editor's note: This article is a summary of a session by the same name presented at the 1998 ASTC Conference, held in October 1998 in Edmonton, Alberta. The session was chaired by Thomas Krakauer, President & CEO, North Carolina Museum of Life and Science (Durham NC) and was organized by ILR Co-Editor Robert Russell. Other panelists included Mary Louise Majewski, Director, Spirit of Ford (Dearborn MI) and Jeannie Stahl, Vice President, White Oak Associates (Marblehead MA).]
Estimating attendance is important for existing and future museums. Existing institutions project attendance, based upon past years' performance and new program and marketing initiatives, as an integral part of developing budgets. Organizations planning future facilities or expansions estimate attendance to convince communities that there is a strong market for the planned facility and to develop initial financial projections. Attendance projection is also central to planning new facilities.
Assumptions Underlying Attendance Estimates
Attendance potential represents the potential attendance that a new of expanding museum might achieve if it operates like its "mature" comparables and all the underlying key assumptions driving attendance remain basically intact.
There are a number of key assumptions driving attendance. Examples of some of these assumptions are
- Size of capital budget (for new facilities),
- Marketing budget,
- Exhibit hall square footage,
- Exhibit investment per square foot,
- Additional attractions, such as a theater or planetarium,
- Program components and special events,
- Pricing at market rates,
- Location, and
- Access/parking.
The sheer size of the public space of the facility is perhaps the most significant factor influencing attendance, according to a statistical model for estimating attendance. What this means is that an institution with a large and attractive exhibit area may attract visitors from far beyond the local community. A compelling example is the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, which attracts over a million visitors a year in a metropolitan area with a population of about a half million. In addition to traditional zoo exhibits, the zoo includes a building with indoor, interactive exhibits and small animal displays, the world's largest indoor rain forest, an aquarium, and an IMAX theater.
This attendance model, developed in 1991, is available from ASTC publications (http://www.astc.org), as a floppy disk and handbook. Entitled Science Museum Attendance: A Desktop Computer Model (Thomas Krakauer, April 1991), this desktop computer spreadsheet model estimates typical attendance using facility, program, economic, and demographic information. The model is based on data obtained for the National Science Center in Augusta GA, by Oak Ridge Associated Universities. The data, gathered from 38 science-technology centers, are analyzed using multivariate regression analysis. This museum attendance package includes a handbook containing instructions, a summary of the survey data, and one computer disk in either Macintosh or PC-compatible format.
Defining Market Segments
Market segments may be defined by county lines, zip codes, distance, driving time, or metro area and designated market areas. An institution may target specific market segments depending on its mission, planned exhibits and programs, and marketing resources. Some examples of ways of defining market segments include:
- Primary market (immediate metropolitan area)
- Secondary and tertiary markets (surrounding region within one-hour or day-trip driving distance)
- School groups (selected grades)
- Overnight tourist market
- Tour groups, and
- Seniors.
When analyzing market segments, an institution can look at a range of variables, including:
- Population and growth trends
- Race and ethnicity
- Age distribution
- Income
- Education, and
- Psychographics (factors influencing leisure choices of market segment).
Collecting Comparable Data and Projecting Attendance Potential
There is a wealth of information available on the residents within specific areas. Good places to begin are the Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitors' Bureau, marketing departments of local print and electronic media, school districts and departments of education, planning departments of local governments, and other top museums or cultural attractions. Some important data to collect and review includes current and future local attractions/competition, major employers, economic trends, and tourism trends.
Local attractions can be analyzed for high and low attendance boundaries, where visitors come from, historical attendance trends, ticket prices, local seasonality, and program territory lines. To look at national, comparable institutions, similar types of museums in other markets should be analyzed for content focus, total square footage, exhibit hall square footage, program components (e.g., theater, outdoor science park, etc.), population base, and geographic location.
It is important to understand how comparable institutions collect attendance data, to make sure it really is comparable. Some institutions include special events, outreach, and other programs in total attendance figures. There are also other factors which are important to consider when making comparisons, such as free admission and ticket prices, how long the institution has been open (has the institution recently expanded?), and other local circumstances.
It is also important to go through cycles of estimating, testing, refining estimates, and analyzing the estimates from various perspectives. Some of these perspectives include:
- Capture ratios: what proportions of specific market segments are attending comparable institutions
- Demographic profile: what proportion of families with XX education, YY income, and children aged XX to YY are attending
- Ratio of on-site attendance against exhibit square footage
- Total daily attendance vs. peak day momentary capacity.
Things Change: Adjusting Your Key Assumptions
A museum may open many years after original attendance potential estimates were made. Estimates should be revised as key assumptions change:
Attendance estimates may be based upon a model of a planned institution that is not fully realized, due to changes and cut-backs in funding. What if your building will be only one-third of the size originally planned? What if you have added a large format theater? What if you region is in a deep recession? What if a similar, competitive attraction has opened near your site? What if planned and complementary developments nearby are cancelled? Factors like these may significantly affect attendance.
Attendance depends on strong programming and marketing. There is an almost infallible and significant drop in attendance in many new museums from the opening year to the second year. The novelty of the first year wears thin quickly, but strong programming (special events, new exhibits), combined with aggressive marketing, can significantly reduce or perhaps even eliminate the drop-off. It is also important to plan for the second and third years, after the grand opening year of a new or expanded facility. With name or brand recognition established, the emphasis in second-year marketing may be on return or repeat visitors, new market segments, or upcoming attractions (new exhibits, special events, etc.).
Attendance depends on visitor perceptions that there is always something new. Although many visitors have their "old favorites," museums build IMAX theaters, rent very expensive blockbuster exhibits, and mount ambitious special events, not only to attract new visitors, but also to attract repeat visitors.
Attendance depends on knowing your audience. Education and income levels are positive predictors of the likelihood that a person or family will attend. John Falk, in his 1993 study Leisure Decisions Influencing African American Use of Museums, observed that when museum-going is not a typical family leisure time experience, it is less likely that a child from this family will become an avid museum-goer in adulthood. When museums try to expand to non-traditional audiences, they should consider that their efforts will not likely result in an immediate increase in attendance. Instead, they should look at such programming as an investment in developing attendance in future generations.
Attendance, finally, depends on good customer service and a perception by visitors that they are getting a good value. No statistics are needed to show how broken exhibits, dirty restrooms, and other such factors can discourage visitors. The positive side is that additional programming-"value-added" experiences-can enhance visitors' satisfaction with their experiences and improve attendance.
Robert Russell is co-author of The Informal Learning Review. He can be reached at hanarus@aol.com.