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The purpose of this study is to investigate through an empirical research the factors that would attract visitors to heritage and cultural sites as museums applied on the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). The paper aims to study the impact of the proposed attraction features learning/knowledge, museum facilities, fun/entertainment and socializing and accessibility/location on pre-visit destination image.

The author started by a thorough literature review to arrive to the suggested conceptual model, which is tested by adopting a quantitative approach where data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire from a convenient sample of 300 respondents with 90% response rate and used partial least squares – structure equation modelling using Smart PLS v.3.2.8.

The results show that three of the tested factors were accepted and one was rejected.

Management of GEM, which will be one of the biggest museums world-wide, can make use of the empirical results of this research to enhance their understanding of the factors that impact pre-visit destination image, and thus, most attract visitors to justify the budget set in this huge project and achieve highest visitation and revenue

This research deals with a new museum that has not opened its doors yet and will start functioning in late 2020, and thus, the pre-visit image of the museum is not based on previous experience of visitors but rather on secondary sources as messages sent to visitors based on attraction features, while most previous studies dealt with post-visit image of museums

This paper presents a study of a system that allows remote and onsite visitors to share a museum visit together in real time. The remote visitors are older adults at a care home and their relatives and/or friends who are at the museum. The museum visits are interactive. Meaningful stories accompany the museum exhibits, and there’s an audio channel between onsite and remote visitors. The aim of the study is to determine whether the remote visitors, i.e. older adults are able to use such technology and to study the mediated sense of spatial presence, social closeness, engagement and enjoyment in the visit. This study discusses the relationship between these aspects and factors leading to a better remote experience for older adults.

This study has 14 onsite and 12 remote older adult participants. Standardized questionnaires measured the mediated sense of spatial presence, the experienced social closeness and the level of participants' engagement and enjoyment in the visit of the older adult participants and traced onsite visitors in their position during the visit. The audio logs were subjected to thematic content analysis.

The results show that older adults enjoy and engage in remote visits, and that there is a positive correlation between enjoyment, engagement and social closeness. The findings argue that both the audio channel and the interactive story are important for creating an affective virtual experience: the audio channel increases the sense of closeness, whereas the interactive story makes the visit more engaging, providing structure, direction and purpose to the visit.

This work advances the state of art in the domain of technologies for older adults and addresses the needs of this population to stay in contact with both people and places.

This article examines curatorial practices, both traditional and digital, in the Guizhou Provincial Museum’s ethnic exhibition to assess their effectiveness in representing ethnic minority cultures, fostering learning and inspiring curiosity about ethnic textiles and costumes and associated cultures. It also explores audience expectations concerning digital technology use in future exhibitions.

A mixed-methods approach was employed, where visitor data were collected through questionnaires, together with interviews with expert, museum professionals and ethnic minority textile practitioners. Their expertise proved instrumental in shaping the design of the study and enhancing the overall visitor experience, and thus fostering a deeper appreciation and understanding of ethnic minority cultures.

Visitors were generally satisfied with the exhibition, valuing their educational experience on ethnic textiles and cultures. There is a notable demand for more immersive digital technologies in museum exhibitions. The study underscores the importance of participatory design with stakeholders, especially ethnic minority groups, for genuine and compelling cultural representation.

This study delves into the potentials of digital technologies in the curation of ethnic minority textiles, particularly for enhancing education and cultural communication. Ethnic textiles and costumes provide rich sensory experience, and they carry deep cultural significance, especially during festive occasions. Our findings bridge this gap; they offer insights for museums aiming to deepen the visitor experiences and understanding of ethnic cultures through the use of digital technologies.

Recommendation systems are widely used in tourism in order to provide people personalized suggestions that would make their trip memorable. Nowadays, mobile assisted guided tours based on recommendation services are used in museums to enhance visitors ’ experience. However, all those systems have been designed to target indoor or outdoor museum visits. Is it feasible to design a system that supports mobile services that connect a museum visit to artworks situated outdoor in the city environment? Is it possible to connect the artworks of a city center to the exhibits of a museum? In this work, we attempt to give a first answer to such questions proposing and implementing a set of services that connects the museum to the city public space. In order to show the strength of the implemented services, we present a basic usage scenario along with a first system evaluation showing positive results.

The evolving visitors' expectations and the unfolding digital transformation compel rethinking on the service offering of museums and cultural institutions. Although digitalization and people-centeredness are widely exploited to enhance the visiting experience, there is limited evidence of their implications on organizational attractiveness. The article investigates this issue, examining the service attributes that entice visitors.

The study collected secondary data from the latest census study by the Italian Institute of Statistics on museums and cultural institutions. Two hierarchical regression models have been run on a sample of large publicly owned organizations (n = 312) to identify the service factors that were most effective in attracting Italian and foreign visitors.

Museums and cultural institutions undergoing a digital transformation were more effective in attracting visitors. The delivery of virtual tours and online events captivated the Italian audience. Foreigners appreciated the opportunity to use applications augmenting the on-site visit.

Digitalization and people-centeredness improve the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions. Using digital channels to engage visitors fosters their desire to interact with cultural heritage. Furthermore, digitalization enriches the on-site visit, expanding conventional services with virtuality. However, the adverse effects on cultural heritage should be carefully handled.

This study highlights the service attributes that add to the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions, enabling them to engage visitors and improve the visiting experience.

This chapter explores the approaches to digital representation of Australian Aboriginal art and visitor engagement in museum exhibition spaces from a digital design perspective. It discusses recent developments in the fields of digital representation of Aboriginal art, immersive exhibition design and visitor engagement. Through a case study of an immersive exhibition on Australian Aboriginal art in the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, this chapter identifies how Aboriginal art can be digitally represented by appropriate immersive technologies ranging from augmented realities [ARs] and virtual realities [VRs] to mixed reality [MRs] and extended reality [XRs] for enhancing visitors’ immersive digital experience. According to the analysis, the digital representation of Aboriginal artworks needs to be conducted practically, cognitively and ontologically based on understanding Australian Aboriginal history and culture. Visitors can engage with Aboriginal art stories meaningfully through immersive exhibitions through this holistic approach.

The continuous development of mobile platforms provides the opportunity to integrate and improve existing applications or to introduce new features to make life better. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of mobile platforms in civilization (museums) and present the design and the implementation of a mobile application that satisfies various design criteria. Through this application the visitor can navigate and tour virtually in the museum through a smartphone. In addition, features have been included in the application that make it easier for a user to visit the museum. First, we present the operating parameters and the aesthetic presentation of the application, which delimits usability and ease of access through the interfaces of a smartphone. Then we highlight the cloud features that were exploited in the application. Then, an extended evaluation of the mobile application is presented, that proves its high applicability and user acceptability.

This paper aims at investigating how tourist experience elicits satisfaction and contributes to loyalty and willingness to pay more for a museum destination. The study also investigates the significant moderating role of visiting frequency on the relationship between satisfaction and willingness to pay more.

The research was conducted with 385 tourists who visited the National Museum in Ghana and answered questions relating to experience, satisfaction, loyalty, and willingness to pay more. Structural equation modelling was used to test the relationships and effects of the adapted constructs.

The results revealed the significant effects of tourist experience on satisfaction, as well as the significant effects of satisfaction on loyalty and willingness to pay more. In addition, a significant moderating effect of visiting frequency was reported on the relationship between satisfaction and tourist willingness to pay more.

The research is destination-specific. The application of the findings to other museums would demand a bigger sample size for generalisation to be made.

Managers should develop strategies that promote museum tourist travelling experience, satisfaction, desire and choice, and thereby attract more tourists to museum sites.

The research contributes to the growing literature on museum tourist experience as an important variable in promoting tourist satisfaction, loyalty, and tourist willingness to pay more.

This paper attempts to fill the gap that exists in research regarding visitor motivations at dark heritage sites. The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivations of visitors to the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum (HPMM) as an iconic dark site in South Africa to identify what motivates visitation and which demographic variables may have an influence on these motivators.

To achieve the goal of this research, 205 participants completed a self-administered questionnaire using a random sampling technique at the HPMM. A statistical analysis through the use of factor analysis revealed seven motivational factors.

Novelty and knowledge seeking, remembrance and curiosity were identified as the three main motives for visiting HPMM. Novelty and knowledge seeking was found to be the main motive that contradicted similar research done in other parts of the globe. Escape and relaxation, which is usually found to be one of the main motivators to heritage sites, was revealed to be one of the least motivators for this study. The results also identified significant relationships between demographic and motivator variables.

The findings of this study revealed that people visit the HPMM primarily for novelty and knowledge seeking, remembrance and respect for victims and curiosity. From the results, it is clear that visitors are driven to visit the site for different motives and that these motives, although common amongst visitors, differ from person to person subject to demographic differences. This study provides an improved understanding of dark tourism demand, which is essential for the sustainable development and promotion of sites in South Africa and globally commemorating people’s struggle against injustice and for democracy.

South Africa is a country with a cosmopolitan history; however, the history associated with apartheid has only recently become topic of tourism research. This study provides a basis to better understand the type of tourist visiting these sites of historical sites, thus leading to better provision of services to visit such attractions.

This study is one of the first to delve into understanding the motivational typology of tourists to a tourism attraction in South Africa associated with the country’s Apartheid-era heritage. It provides an insight into enhancing the current fragmented understanding of dark tourism demand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that Facebook Fan Pages (FFPs) play in the generation of visit intention. The study has three objectives: first, to examine the effects of museum-generated content (MGC) on perceived information quality and perceived customer service and perceived information quality and perceived customer service on visit intention and, second, to test the model with two samples to make comparisons that provide useful insights.

Data were collected through an online survey that achieved 308 valid responses. A multi-group analysis was conducted to compare the results from two groups: users of the Frida Kahlo museum and Anahuacalli museum FFPs.

The results reveal that there are significant differences between the two samples regarding the direct effects of perceived information quality on visit intention and perceived customer service on visit intention. The authors also noted a slight difference between the two museums’ FFPs in the relationship between MGC and perceived information quality.

Further research is needed to examine other FFP factors that influence visit intention to clarify the results obtained from the two samples and to analyse the proposed model in other settings. This research contributes to the literature concerning the impact of online platforms on visit intention.

The findings provide useful insights for managers as to how to increase their FFP followers’ intention to visit their establishments.

El propósito de esta investigación es examinar el papel que desempeñan las páginas de fans de Facebook (PFFs) en la generación de intenciones de visita. El objetivo de este estudio es doble: primero, examinar los efectos del contenido generado por el museo sobre la calidad de la información percibida y el atención al cliente percibido, y la calidad de la información percibida y el atención al cliente percibido sobre las intenciones de la visita y el segundo, probar el modelo en dos muestras para establecer una comparación que proporcione ideas útiles.

Los datos fueron recogidos a través de una encuesta online de 308 respuestas válidas. Se realiza un análisis multigrupo para comparar los resultados entre dos grupos: PFF del museo de Frida Kahlo y la PFF del museo Anahuacalli.

Los resultados revelan que existen diferencias significativas entre las dos muestras con respecto a los efectos directos de la calidad de la información percibida en las intenciones de visita y el servicio al cliente percibido en las intenciones de visita. También se ha observado una ligera diferencia entre las PFF de los dos museos en la relación entre el contenido generado por el museo y la calidad de la información percibida.

Se necesita más investigación para examinar otros factores en las PFF que influyen en las intenciones de visitar, aclarar los diferentes resultados obtenidos en las dos muestras y analizar el modelo propuesto en otros entornos. Esta investigación contribuye a la literatura sobre el impacto de las plataformas online en las intenciones de visitar.

Los resultados proporcionan información útil para los gerentes sobre cómo aumentar las intenciones de sus seguidores de visitar sus establecimientos.

Intención de visitar, Contenido generado por el museo, Calidad de la información percibida, Atención al cliente percibido, Facebook

Trabajo de investigación