Adam's Ideas Issue #1 - Making Museums Awesome 🏛️

Before we get to it I want to take a minute to say thank you.

There’s 19 of you on this list currently, and you’ve taken a gamble by signing up before I’ve sent a single newsletter.

I started this without much thought after my wife suggested I put my notebook of ideas and opportunities to good use. I didn’t think anyone would be interested, but the fact you’ve all signed up suggests I was wrong.

So thank you, I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.

Estimated reading time - 4 minutes.

Museums are big business in the UK.

Thanks to government grants and sponsorship many museums across the UK are free to enter.

Total visitor numbers for the whole UK museum sector are difficult to find. But across the 15 museums sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport between April 2023 and June 2023 they received 10.3 million visitors - and that isn’t even peak tourist season!

I’ve been to almost all of the major museums in the UK and they truly are amazing. There’s just one problem…

The tours suck.

Now I appreciate that’s a bit of a sweeping statement, of course there are exceptions, but the vast majority do suck.

Here’s the issues:

• You generally can’t book - you just turn up on the day and hopefully there’s room, that’s even if there’s a tour on which is pot luck as well.

• Groups are large - like seriously large, often you need one of those daft earpieces to even hear what’s happening.

• They’re kind of soulless - if you’re being given a tour we all want to hear from someone who is truly passionate about the subject.

• They’re not engaging or fun - museums should be fun! Share the untold stories, make it engaging and captivating, give me the bits not written on any of the display boards.

Now hop onto any of the tour booking websites and you’ll find you can indeed book a pre-paid tour to many UK museums with an independent tour operator.

But the reviews tell me these suffer from similar issues with varying abilities of guides and large group numbers.

Tell me, what’s the opportunity here?

It’s simple - museum tours that don’t suck.

I got this idea from Museum Hack who launched in 2011 in the US with the tagline - F***ing Awesome Museum Tours.

Offering small group (max 9 people) ‘renegade’ tours across the US with names such as ‘Badass Bitches’ and ‘Un-Highlights @ the Met’ they’re doing things differently.

And it’s working with thousands of positive reviews!

Museum Hack sold in 2019 to it’s management team for an undisclosed sum of ‘a few million dollars’ with revenue of $2.8m.

Opportunities like this are great as there’s an established, successful business you can learn from.

So, what did Museum Hack do?

I’ve studied Museum Hack’s playbook extensively for this deep dive and their formula is quite simple - Guides, Games and Gossip

Guides

Museum Hack view their guides as the heart and soul of the company, and the main reason customers keep returning.

They’ve recruited guides with a wide variety of backgrounds but put one aspect above all else - storytelling.

And I think that is the key to their success - you can have all the knowledge in the world but if you’re boring nobody is going to listen, people need to be entertained first and foremost.

Their guides are allowed to show their passion for the museums. Museum Hack allow them to write their own tours so they’re covering the parts they are truly interested in.

They talk in a way people can understand and make it seem human - if you’ve been on a tour in any art gallery you’ll know the pain here, there’s a presumed knowledge of art history and if you lack this the whole thing fails to make any sense!

Games

Museum Hack tours all start with a hands in huddle and a cheer of ‘museum’ before they start.

They’re full of fun with silly group poses mirroring artwork, an encouragement to get up and close with artefacts including lying down, and challenges with prizes for the winners.

Check out the pictures on their TripAdvisor reviews, you’ll get the idea.

‘Renegade’ does seem pretty accurate!

Gossip

They tell the backstories behind the art and objects on the tours.

People love intrigue, mystery, and scandal - it seems Museum Hack give them exactly what they want!

Watch the TedX talk by Nick Gray, the founder of Museum Hack, if you want to learn more about their approach.

This sounds great! Where should I start?

You’re probably having the same thoughts I did - this sounds like a great idea but will the museums let you in?

The answer is yes, but how easy that is to arrange varies.

Some museums are pretty cool with tour groups, including large ones like the British Museum where you can pre-book a time slot (for under 10 people) and just turn up.

Others will want you to register as a travel trade tour which sometimes comes with minimum spend requirements. Getting your foot in the door with museums in this category will undoubtedly be easier once you’ve got some tours under your belt so I’d avoid those initially.

The main challenge here is going to be building some awesome tours. Museum Hack is a disruptor in the US museum tour market, if you want to crush it like they have you need to be the same in the UK.

Study Museum Hack, they’ve got a proven model and you can learn a lot from them. I’d recommend watching the TedX talk by Nick Gray, the founder of Museum Hack.

But take what they’ve done, and adapt it for the UK market.

There’s so much history in the UK you could even avoid museums all together and do walking tours using the Museum Hack principles.

I will leave you with this - I’ve read endless articles on Museum Hack, explored the current offerings on tours in the UK, and read their reviews to see where the opportunities are. These are the key things if you want to be that disruptor:

• Small group tours - no more than 8-10 people.

• Your guides must be passionate storytellers - prioritise this above any other qualification, if people aren’t engaged they aren’t listening.

• Make them fun - games, challenges, silly photo opportunities.

• Make it memorable - don’t play it safe with the same old boring tours, dare to do something new and interesting.

I hope this has been a useful deep dive for you. It’s my first time writing such a guide so I’m very open to feedback on how I can improve this to make it as valuable as possible for you - just hit reply.

And don’t hold back - be honest!

I’ll be continuing to post an idea a day on Twitter so follow me there if you haven’t already.

Next weeks newsletter will be on alcohol-free activities and an opportunity in that area.