COVID-19 brought much of the world to a standstill. As the government implemented stay at home orders, museums and tourist attractions dutifully closed their doors. After the initial days and weeks of closures, what seemed like a temporary situation began to set in as a new reality, and new concerns seized the attention of the entire cultural industry – what will the future hold?

Now, more than three months later, we have witnessed the abundance of creative ways in which organizations have responded to the crisis, working harder than ever to offer connection, engaging digital experiences, and community support, while tactfully leveraging the power of the internet to create a respite from the everyday. In the period following the closures of tens of thousands of museums and cultural attractions, ideas and plans for digital transformation, once seen as luxuries or pipe dreams, made their way to the forefront of the cultural industry. With doors closed, organizations urgently shifted their focus to digital content, emerging technology, and new distribution channels to reach and engage their hungry audiences.

A “New Normal”

As we press onward and museums enter into phased reopenings, another concern is materializing – as the doors to museums (and any “place” for that matter) reopen, what does the new, physically-distanced experience look like? While initial estimates may have predicted short term closures of a few days to weeks, many cultural organizations are only just beginning to reopen. Others may be weeks or months out from welcoming audiences back. This has spurred mounting anxieties about what it will take to win audiences back and ensure they feel safe.

How can cultural institutions embrace a “new normal” in order to safely allow visitors back inside? This is a critical question that all types of organizations around the globe are investigating as they open their doors to a new reality.

Given the unpredictable nature of this pandemic, as well as the ubiquitous fear of social interactions, crowds, and public spaces that this pandemic has brought about, museums and attractions are preparing for an era of social distancing to ensure the safety and comfort of their visitors and staff, even as quarantine ends.

The Visitor Experience Before Coronavirus

Think about everything you encountered during your last visit to a museum or cultural site, before coronavirus. Up until the outbreak of COVID-19, visitors and patrons commonly encountered numerous physical touchpoints throughout their visit. From the first moment they stepped foot on-site, visitors were interacting with staff at the front desk and exchanging credit cards, cash, membership cards, and tickets. Some museums might have also offered touchscreen ticketing kiosks, where hundreds or thousands of visitors touched the same surfaces each day. These interactions brought visitors and staff in close proximity to others and often involved exchanging or touching physical objects. No one ever thought twice about these commonplace activities.

Beyond the ticket counter, visitors commonly engaged with interactive media offerings like borrowed audio guides and touch screens to enhance their museum experience. Over the last couple of decades, interactives have become a familiar sight in many institutions, thoughtfully woven into the visitor journey to ensure an exciting, hands-on experience.

In the age of COVID-19, interactives that once seemed like a benefit now pose real health risks. It is critical that organizations take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of their visitors and staff. Already, organizations are eliminating touch screens and shared audio guides in favor of visitors using their own mobile devices or touch-free interfaces that leverage voice or gesture. In fact, some European museums have already banned borrowed audio guides. New technologies are growing in popularity and are helping to offer visitors a safer, contactless experience as well as a more dynamic and seamless visit.

The museum experience prior to coronavirus was predicated upon a maze of social interactions, encounters with shared equipment and devices, and close physical contact with staff and fellow visitors - think massive crowds squeezing to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa. It’s clear that in today’s world, this same experience is both dangerous and impractical. A safe reopening means a successful reopening and it’s imperative that museums thoughtfully assess and re-think their visitor services and experience design from end-to-end.

What Comes Next for Ticketing and Queuing?

When a visitor enters a museum or cultural organization, the first touch-point they encounter is the ticketing desk or kiosk. Visitors proceed to purchase tickets or show their membership cards to museum staff, which involves an exchange of money, credit cards, or membership cards. Alternatively, visitors can interact with a public touch screen ticketing kiosk.

As museums reopen, the old entry process is already proving to be untenable, as visitors shy away from coming into close contact with others or touching public screens. Consequently, smartphone-enabled check-out processes, or newly automated, voice and gesture activated checkout technology will replace existing ticketing kiosks. With new digital solutions like this coming into play, it will also be foreseeable that physical tickets and receipts will no longer be necessary either - a win for public health and the environment. In the near-term, museums may need to coach their guests on embracing contactless forms of payment, in place of cash and cards, but the public will have already jumped years forward in these types of interactions with commerce and digital conveniences in other areas of everyday life.

Interested in making membership contactless? Download our Guide: How to Launch & Succeed with Digital Membership Cards.

Many mid-to-large sized museums are already embracing timed ticketing, virtual smart queues, and reserve-ahead ticket models, too. This is allowing visitors to plan their visits in advance and receive notifications via mobile alerts when it’s their turn to enter. These approaches reduce the risks associated with close person-to-person interaction, unnecessary congregating in lines, and contact with highly-trafficked surfaces. The future of museum entry is frictionless, contactless, and efficient, and can provide organizations with the data insights they’ve always strived for.

Bring Your Own Device

As museums reopen, visitors are keen to avoid shared audio guides, contact with physical objects, and interactive screens. As a result, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) mobile options are already becoming the safe and standard option. The vast majority of Americans own a smartphone, so this was just a matter of time. Physical touchpoints have historically required costly hardware, customization, and ongoing maintenance. Paired with new safety concerns and public anxieties, the future of interactivity will live on, but just in a new location: the visitors’ own devices.

But these aren’t the only concerns. Traditional marketing materials such as printed brochures and laminated handouts also pose risks. Object labels, one of the most ubiquitous forms of communicating information about objects and artworks, cause crowds. To read the small text on these labels, visitors have to get close up and sometimes shoulder-to-shoulder with others, which simply won’t work in the age of social distancing. As a result, museums and their visitors are favoring mobile-powered offerings, which provide the benefit of accessing content and information as needed from wherever the visitors feel most comfortable, with added possibilities around location-triggered or contextual content and other accessibility benefits to serve all types of visitors.

Service Design in the Age of Social Distancing

As visitors make their way through the museum having avoided touchscreens and shared devices, another risk remains: people and crowds. Early museum reopenings have already revealed the anxiety and challenges around guest management due to crowded rooms and galleries, which are not usually optimized to facilitate social distancing.

Because of this, cultural venues are considering changes in service and experience design to encourage and enforce social distancing. The next generation of mobile apps will be able to assist in real-time smart-routing to help visitors avoid crowded galleries and corridors, advanced wayfinding, and mobile alerts can be triggered when visitors get too close to each other or attempt to enter an area that’s already at capacity.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention (and Innovation)

Due to the combination of public health requirements and new consumer expectations, many museums have expressed concerns about their ability to adapt accordingly. While the challenges might seem daunting, let’s remember that some of history’s most innovative solutions and greatest breakthroughs were created in the face of enormous constraints and adversity.

COVID-19 has inspired new ways of thinking and has streamlined approaches to various facets of the cultural sector. To overcome new challenges, museum professionals must continue to adopt fresh perspectives and mindsets and work to establish the culture that will become a new normal. A look at recent events suggests that now, more than ever, museums are prepared to adapt and transform themselves. In recent years, many museums and cultural organizations have embraced emerging technologies and a willingness to experiment and even fail in the process of doing so. Additionally, a growing number of museums have started to welcome a more agile and nimble mentality as they test out new strategies that take count for the immutable role that technology plays in their future. While the pace of change in the nonprofit and cultural sector tends to trail slower than other industries, COVID has accelerated the pace of transformation and there is now no looking back.

This pandemic has led to a new, unexpected era in the museum experience, ripe for innovation. Despite the difficulties these circumstances have presented, this new era will usher in the changes many of us have been seeking for decades. Necessity is the mother of invention and it has cut away some of the red-tape and barriers that have historically stood in the way of new ideas. It has compelled cultural organizations to leverage the internet and mobile technology to a more dynamic, creative, and fuller extent.

Inside and outside of the four walls of the museum, necessity will mobilize the entire cultural industry to be more tech-forward, more inclusive, and more efficient. As the doors continue to re-open, it will be essential to provide the public with a healthier and more accessible experience that caters to all, and technology holds many of the answers to these challenges. The future of museums once felt like it was years away – it’s time to start leveraging modern tools and technology to build it today.

Looking to implement new digital solutions at your organization? Schedule a free consultation with Cuseum today.

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