There has been a change in the way people access and enjoy culture. Faced with this reality, museums can no longer be just places where to store and exhibit art pieces, as they must follow the new trends and the new needs and expectations of visitors. In this vein, museums and cultural firms are starting to adopt new technologies for a variety of initiatives, not only to communicate with visitors or monitor their behavior during the visit, but also to involve them in more immersive initiatives and events. The chapter analyses the academic literature on the topic, aiming to offer a theoretical basis for future research on this subject. In addition, the chapter presents examples of museums adopting new technologies in special events to involve new categories of visitors and improve their offer and general performance.
TopNew Trends In The Museum Sector
Since the sixties of the last century, information and communication technologies (ICT) have increasingly evolved and perfected to be used massively in different sectors of society, bringing about innovation and change. If, in the beginning, the first technological experiments were simple means, since the nineties, multimedia technologies are re-proposed as environments, raising the level of pervasiveness and immersiveness perceptible by the user, who, from that moment on, would have had an increasingly active role in the use of content (O'Brien, 2020).
In the museum field, these tools have led to great innovations in the systems of protection, management, enhancement, and fruition, as well as in the creation, production, and distribution of the culture (Augello et al., 2021; Palumbo, 2021). In line with this, when one is scanning literature contributions on museums’ management, a shift can be observed in people's needs, desires, and motivations for attending a cultural event or visiting a museum (Easson and Leask, 2020). This new reality forces cultural heritage professionals to develop strategies to re-engage visitors in museums and attract new audiences (Black, 2012). In this way, museums must move away from being just places to store and exhibit art pieces and focus on how to meet the needs of new and existing audiences, with particular reference to hard-to-reach audiences who do not usually visit museums (Lehman et al., 2016) and new audiences who may not be interested in the traditional museum offer (Barron and Leask, 2017; Easson and Leask, 2020).
When planning technology-driven initiatives, either permanent or temporary, such as events, museums’ managers must take into account the available budget; indeed, the choice leading to this kind of initiative can be strongly influenced by low budgets (Verona et al., 2018; Suroto et al., 2020).
The importance of new technologies is identified by the OECD (2018) as one of the pillars of tourism until 2040. In this sense, the International Council of Museums, in its 2019 annual report (ICOM, 2019a), refers to the importance of the application of new technologies to complement the content of physical exhibitions with digital content, or to increase the promotion of the museum and exhibitions through social networks (ICOM, 2019b). Likewise, ICOM (2019a) notes the suitability of new technologies to improve accessibility for all people, regardless of their physical or cognitive limitations. UNESCO (2021) stresses the need to combine online and offline activities in museums to better adapt to target audiences, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Agostino et al., 2021; UNESCO, 2021; Marty and Buchanan, 2022).
Both theoretical and empirical evidence shows that strategies to attract new visitors to museums, such as after-hours visits (Easson and Leask, 2020), evening visits (Barron and Leask, 2017), open days (Barbosa and Quelhas, 2012), and the interaction between the public and the art pieces (Smith and Richards, 2013) are even more technology-driven, thanks to the employment of mobile devices.