09.03.2010 - 
By Trudy Coxe, CEO and Executive Director, and John Rodman, Director of Museum Experience
The Preservation Society of Newport County

(As published in NEMA News, the quarterly membership magazine of the New England Museum Association, Fall 2009)

There is a great debate in the US museum community these days about the relevance of admissions growth as a measure of success. One deciding factor when it comes to assessing the importance of admissions is the degree to which your financial well-being depends on it. While that may sound almost trite, it contains a key concept: any institution that must pay its own way has to pay attention to where its money comes from, or it won’t survive. Institutions that rely on their endowment, watch the market; institutions  that rely on grants, track grant makers;  institutions  that rely on private philanthropy, cultivate the donor community; and institutions  that rely on admissions as a key component of revenue must watch museum visitors.

In this context, the Kykuit Report on the viability of historic house museums reached a conclusion which is applicable to the viability of all museums: an over-dependence on any one funding source is an unwise risk.  This has been demonstrated time and again in the latest round of economic woes. A very significant question for all of us who rely upon admissions is, “what is the right balance of revenue from sources like admissions compared to more traditional streams?”

Historically, The Preservation Society of Newport County has relied on its museum visitors and general membership, along with special events and a discrete group of donors, for its annual cash flow. For that reason, the Preservation Society has kept a lot of its focus on sustaining attendance and building a well-developed, well-recognized reputation as a museum “not to be missed” while vacationing or travelling in New England. This has, in turn, fueled the growth of membership to almost 22,000 and yielded significant growth in fundraising such as our annual fund, which exceeded budget this year and received $640,000 in contributions.

With our visitation base playing such a vital role, the Preservation Society is constantly researching the attitudes of our museum visitors, developing programs, and adopting marketing strategies to sustain that success.  Our properties annually draw visitors from virtually all of the lower 48 states and more than a dozen foreign countries. Our membership base reflects that distribution. In 2009 the Preservation Society is in its third consecutive year of growth in visitation. This year admissions have increased every month and are 5.5% ahead of last year. 

This sustained growth is a result of understanding the needs and interests of a very specific group within our current visitor base, the decision makers. After thousands of visitor interviews and surveys, we have identified a very distinct group.  They are mostly women, between 35 and 60, who have primary influence in making decisions for their families and groups to visit our houses. We know this group is the fastest growing segment of internet users. Their media consumption is focused around specialized magazines like MORE. Their travel priorities include a desire to be surrounded by beauty, make lifelong memories, be with their friends and loved ones, feel responsibility-free when they are travelling and emerge relaxed and refreshed from a travel experience. 

While not ignoring new audiences, we decided years ago to focus our attention on this group as the source with the greatest potential for new visitation. Even though we see 750,000 admissions a year, we don’t believe we have reached even a fraction of all the people whose tastes and lifestyles are like the visitors who already appreciate and support our properties. Instead of trying to grow by reaching significantly different audiences, which would require reshaping our museum, we set out to connect with the unreached portion of our current audience much more effectively and emphasize to our staff that our job is to create a visitation experience that meets as many of their goals as possible.

 In addition to marketing research, our Academic Programs Department conducted an NEH grant-funded learning study of our current museum visitors in order to design better tours that provide what is demanded by the public – a free choice learning environment.   As a result, this year we rolled out a long-awaited audio tour of the flagship property of the Preservation Society, The Breakers. The tour reflects ten years of research and responds to many of the questions people asked while the NEH survey was conducted.  Therefore, there are voices of Vanderbilt family members, staff who worked in the house,  and historians who have critiqued the building over the years.

The new tour took years to create and a financial commitment in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The results have been overwhelming.  In July, The New York Times highlighted the stories of the staff of The Breakers.  A national story by the Associated Press (which has appeared in hundreds of  media outlets throughout the country) focused on the same theme and emphasized the favorable impact that the stories of those who worked in The Breakers had on museum visitors.

The new tour of the Breakers is actually the third audio tour created by the Preservation Society. All three differ from most audio tours at most museums in one critical, important way: everybody gets to take it. There is no additional charge. This means the richness and depth of the tour is the common experience for all visitors. The audio tours at The Breakers and our other “audio houses” offer flexibility not available in other “velvet rope” tours. Guests can tour the house any way they want, at any speed they want. The core tour can be taken in under 50 minutes. But enough extra information is available to spend up to 90 minutes in the house. 

The new Breakers tour has continued to grow from its opening last April and has helped overall admissions grow. As an example, on Sunday of  Labor Day weekend The Breakers set a new one-day admissions record of over 3,700 people. Over 9,000 people visited all of our houses that day. Compared to last year, nearly 30,000 more people have visited the Newport Mansions since our main season opened in April.

The new Breakers tour capitalizes on two previous years of solid growth, but the growth was not taken for granted. In fact, this year the Preservation Society budgeted for a 7.5% decline in visitation, but mounted its press, internet and marketing campaign with a proactive plan aimed at success. After investing heavily in the content of the new tour and all the hardware needed to convert a house with a third of a million visitors a year from guided tours to audio tours, it would have been unwise to back away from a marketing commitment equal to the new project itself. 

The new Breakers tour offers one additional key advantage: it draws on the permanent collection and is closely aligned with the overall identity of the Preservation Society and its communications strategy.

That said, there is no single news story, ad strategy, or event that will build attendance over time. It takes a well-founded understanding of the audience, consistent programming, focused marketing, and a well-aligned press strategy – all well executed -- to grow the audience.   Just as effective development growth often takes years of diligent professional work to bear fruit, building strong and sustained admissions growth takes years of diligent professional work to bring museum programs of the highest quality to the attention of audiences who will support them year after year.