Cafes And Museums

By Joe Collins

The preliminary analysis of our data Insight started by focusing on the factors which most influence the number of visitors to a heritage site. Two of the most important factors are having a museum and providing refreshments.

It seems that heritage visitors really are attracted the combination of a museum and café. The V&A weren’t wrong when they described themselves in their 1980’s advertising campaign as “An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached”.

If you have ever visited a museum you might say that this is obvious. The museum and café are key parts of the visitor experience. However for museums struggling to make ends meet it is tempting to diversify. This finding confirms and quantifies the value of museums’ core offering, although we may also need to refine our understanding of what that ‘core’ is.