help with re-location

G'Day, I look after a motorcycle museum in Canberra. Australia. Due to financial considerations the owners of the museum are going to shift it out of Canberra. What worries me most that they believe that it does not matter where they shift it to, people will still come to visit us. We have the largest collection of motorcycles open to the public in Australia, with some very unusual machines on display(over 230 machines in all). We currently average about 20 visitors a day. The idea is to shift it to a larger property and ofer accomadation, picnic, and camping facilities as well as a new purpose built building. My problem is how do I convince them that it is important to position the museum, either in a tourist area, or at least expose it to passing traffic, on a major highway. Does anyone have any horror stories, of this attitude causing the downfall of a good museum or similar. Any input will be most gratefully accepted.

Dear David:

I think now might be a good time to do a self-examination of the museum and its reason for existing - does your museum have a mission statement?

Secondly, now would be a good time for the owners to conduct a Comprehensive Feasibility Study of the contemplated move - investigating and conducting the necessary site research and comparable visitor projections on a number of potential sites - the projected costs and projected income sources and levels for each site.

MSI has worked with on such a 'Relocation' study for The Chicago Academy of Sciences with The Visitor Attraction Section of The Real Estate Services Group of Arthur Andersen and it is amazing what types of 'hard' information comes out of these studies. Relocating the museum without the benefit of such a study - and without the benefit of the projected income for each proposed museum site would be disasterous. Commercial organizations would not do - why should a museum? Especially, when the relocation would involve, not only the move itself, but the design and construction of a new museum building.

However, I think you should impart to your Board or owners the old Real Estate maxim:

There are three important factors to be considered in Real Estate:

1. Location 2. Location 3. Location.

The mentality of 'If you built it, they will come' is outmoded. It flies in the face of the long accepted business practice of Feasibility Studies and especially in the relatively new field of Cultural Tourism Development Studies.

Kind Regards

Roger Wulff Museum Services International

PS: Please contact me if you would like some addition information on the field of Cultural Tourism Development.

Mr. Knight,

As advice goes, I do not think I can offer any better than that of Mr. Wulff. I can offer this insight. I work in a small museum in Washington, DC. We are not located near The Mall, which is the major tourist center here, and we are not located near any public transportation. While we do have a good number of visitors, overcoming our location can be our greatest challenge. It really makes the staff's job more difficult because we must first make people aware of us and then convince them that it is worth their while to go out of their way to see us. Your board needs to understand that having a wonderful museum does not automatically translate into lots of visitors. Best of luck to you, Marlisa P. Mizerak Head of Education Webmaster The Kreeger Museum