Thoughts on tours
After a long hiatus, I am back to write again, beginning with thoughts about tours of historic houses, and tours in general.
Historic house guided tours have received a reputation
over the last couple decades with many museum visitors, and also with museum
professionals, as being boring. There is
no other way to put it. Let me give you
an example of a young curator’s experience.
Michelle loves historic homes – so much in fact that even
when she is not curating her own site, she visits them on vacation. A couple
summers ago Michelle headed on a trip to a southern city where she was looking
forward to touring historic houses. That is, until she went on her first
tour. The guide droned on and on and
would not release the visitors even though the time to end the tour had long
lapsed. It was excruciating! Even though
Michelle had planned to visit other sites in the area, she could not bring
herself to take a chance on getting another tedious tour.
Think about your own experiences. Are you one of those
thousands of visitors to historic houses that have had the misfortune to take a
bad tour? When I ask that question at
workshops and training session I conduct with museum staff, I always get a knowing
laugh from the audience, followed by everyone raising their hand indicating
they know just what I mean.
While some consider bad tours to be merely a nuisance,
they're really much more than that.
Tours that are long, boring and not engaging to either adults or
children are actually a real drag on the whole museum profession. Research conducted by Reach Advisors indicates
that tours are one of the least favorite ways for people to experience interpretation
– only 45% of visitors surveyed indicated that they liked that form of
interpretation. While some might say
that's not bad, it’s almost one-half of visitors. It really is an anchor for the profession
that is weighing down reputation, attendance, and therefore revenue. Very, very
bad.
Why is it so terrible?
In Michelle’s case above, her dreadful tour had a distressing effect on nearby
sites because she did not visit them … or bring the sites money from her
admission and store purchases. That
unpleasant tour experience is why so many visitors who like and enjoy history
do not like historic house tours. If visitors have an unsatisfying, dull tour,
they will often avoid going on another tour.
It’s not worth the risk of wasting time, just as Michelle felt. And not only do they have an unpleasant
experience, they are probably not going to say good things about the house they
visited. As a matter fact, they are probably going to have some pretty negative
comments about the tour that they will pass along to others.
While that all sounds bleak and depressing, it doesn't
have to be that way. Just as boring
tours can give visitors a lasting negative impression, so too can engaging,
relevant tours provide visitors with great experiences and lasting positive
impressions. I am sure all of you have
had the experience of going on a really superb tour. When that happens you talk
about it with other people.
Engaging tours can have an impact. Let me give you two examples. A couple years
ago I was touring plantations in Charleston, South Carolina and partaking of
all the African American experience tours that I could. I went on one tour at
the Magnolia Plantation that was perhaps the best tour I have ever had, and
when I recounted my trip to others I always mentioned that site and that
tour. I also urged anyone traveling in
that area to go on the same tour.
Another good example is the success of the Tenement
Museum, built in large part on the excellence of their tours – at least that is
how I heard about the Museum years ago while working at Baltimore City Life
Museums. Visitors would come on our tour, have a great experience, and then
tell me that I should visit the Tenement museum if I wanted to see another good
tour. When I visited there a couple years ago, I could see what all those
visitors meant. It really was excellent.
That’s the upside of good tours. Visitors have a good experience and want to
share it with others. As you probably
did when you had a good tour, they enjoy telling people about it and
recommending it. As you can see, if good tours are a regular occurrence at your
site, then you have a lot of goodwill ambassadors out there promoting your
site.
Fortunately, there are strategies for developing and
techniques for delivering engaging, meaningful tours – and all of it is
supported by recent research. Over the
next few months I will present strategies and techniques to create engaging
tours that leads visitors to connect with your site and mission, elicits their
good will and perhaps support, and increase the chances that they will praise
your site to relatives, friends and acquaintances.
Following the posts on tours, I’ll begin presenting strategies
and techniques, and the research behind them, for other live interpretation –
museum theatre, living history, free-range, or roving, interpretation and
others.
Stay tuned!
