Abstract
The upsurge of the Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of cultural tourism to unprecedented crisis constraining the individual freedom to travel. Museums and cultural institutions have been prompted to reconfigure their organizational structures and service offering to survive the backlash of the pandemic. However, literature does not agree on the initiatives which are most effective in augmenting their viability in the post-Covid-19 era. This study captures evidence from initiatives undertaken by a large sample (n = 2,968) of Italian museums and cultural institutions to thrive amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. A regression analysis was designed to investigate how innovations in the service offering influence the organizational attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions. Social networking enabled organizations to maintain meaningful exchanges with the audience amidst the pandemic. Initiatives aimed at enriching the service offering and emphasizing the authenticity of the cultural heritage boosted the museums and cultural institutions’ organizational attractiveness.
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1 Introduction
Even though it has received modest attention in the scholarly debate (Bonet, 2011), cultural tourism represents one of the most relevant sources of travels across the world (Csapó, 2012). According to previous studies, cultural tourism accounts for about 4 in 10 tourism arrivals (Richards, 2018). This is especially true in Countries having a rich and heterogeneous cultural heritage, such as Italy (Vergori & Arima, 2020), which is the context hosting the empirical part of this research. Museums, galleries, archaeological parks, monuments, and historical sites attract most cultural tourists (Jovicic, 2016), delivering a service offering which meets the latter’s emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual needs (Stebbins, 1996). Cultural tourism witnessed a growth in size and interest in the last few years (Fang, 2020), being conceived of as a flourishing sector in the tourism industry (Petrei, Cavallo, & Santoro, 2020). This spiralling growth incited scholars to recommend policies intended to address the shortcomings produced by excessive cultural tourism, which has been argued to reduce the emotional and intellectual impact of the cultural experience perceived by tourists (Frey & Briviba, 2021). However, the Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic abruptly arrested the hike of cultural tourism, creating unprecedented management challenges for museums and cultural institutions across the world (Pascoal et al., 2021).
The issues brought by the pandemic prompted museums and cultural institutions to reconfigure their organizational structures and management practices in order to advance their capability to cope with the evolving expectations of the audience (Samaroudi, Echavarria, & Perry, 2020). Social distancing prescriptions intended to reduce the spread of the pandemic fostered the digital transformation of museums and cultural institutions (Agostino, Arnaboldi, & Lema, 2020), which started exploiting digital tools and technologies to advance their exchange with the audience and augment their attractiveness towards cultural tourists (Tranta, Alexandri, & Kyprianos, 2021).
Museums and cultural institutions have undertaken different initiatives to address the drawbacks generated by Covid-19 (Oyelude, 2020), trying to develop an increased organizational resilience to survive the pandemic (Flew & Kirkwood, 2021). Reshaping organizational architectures and management processes through digitalization has been identified as an effective strategy to achieve organizational viability (Cerquetti & Cutrini, 2022), absorb the environmental unpredictability (Burke, Jørgensen, & Jørgensen, 2020), and empower museums and cultural institutions to increase their attractiveness shifting from onsite closures to online openness (Agostino, Arnaboldi, & Lampis, 2020). Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is limited agreement on the approaches which are most likely to improve the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to thrive in the cyber-physical setting and attract cultural tourists (Palumbo, 2022). On the one hand, digitalization has been presented as the main ingredient of the recipe for cultural institutions’ competitiveness, since it paves the way for the design and delivery of value-added services which consist with the changing expectations of the audience (Raimo et al., 2021). On the other hand, it might engender a depersonalization of the cultural experience, preventing visitors from fully enjoying the service offering of museums and cultural institutions (Kronblad & Envall Pregmark, 2021).
Previous studies attempted to investigate how museums have reacted to the health crisis through digitalization (e.g., Tan & Tan, 2021; Tranta, Alexandri, & Kyprianos, 2021). Notwithstanding, several knowledge gaps prevent us from acknowledging what museums and cultural institutions can do to preserve a vivid exchange with the audience. Whilst enabling organizations to overcome the prescriptions of physical closure, the recontextualization of the service offering in the cyber-physical domain might undermine the ability of museums and cultural institutions to establish an authentic and engaging relationship with the audience (Kist, 2020). Such issues are further exacerbated by the limited readiness of museums and cultural institutions to undertake a digital transformation which serves the purpose of overcoming the restrictions enacted by the spread of the pandemic (Giannini & Bowen, 2022). Drawing on these considerations, the article contributes to the scholarly debate, providing some evidence to push forward our understanding of how digitalization enables museums and cultural institutions to survive the health emergency by renovating their service offering and attracting new inflows of cultural tourists. More specifically, the study answers the following research question:
R. Q.: Which innovations can enhance the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to attract cultural tourists in the post-Covid-19 era?
An empirical study design involving a large sample of Italian museums and cultural institutions was accomplished to address this research question. The article is articulated as follows. Next section delivers the conceptual background which inspired this empirical research. Then, study methods are described, alongside with the presentation of the institutional attributes of the cultural institutions contemplated in the analysis. The report of the study findings is included in the fourth section of the article, paving the way for the contextualization of collected evidence to the extant scholarly debate, as argued in the discussion section. Conclusions stress the original contribution of this article, highlighting the main theoretical and practical implications which can be obtained from the study findings.
2 Conceptual background
The exceptional challenges brought by Covid-19 prompted museums and cultural institutions to undertake a hurried digital transformation (Agostino, Arnaboldi, & Lema, 2020), which was primarily intended at reframing the service experience of visitors in the digital domain to ensure operational continuity (Giannini & Bowen, 2022). Scholars are consistent in arguing that tailored investments aimed at developing a digital strategy and sustaining the digital transformation of organizational activities are essential to enable museums and cultural institutions to overcome the backlash of the crisis following the spread of the pandemic (Marty & Buchanan, 2022; Palumbo, Ciasullo, Pellegrini, Caputo, & Turco, 2022). Whilst museums and cultural institutions have largely complied with the shift towards a new normality of designing and delivering cultural services which is augmented by digital technologies (Silva, 2021a), heterogeneous approaches have been implemented to meet the evolving needs perceived by current and prospective visitors in the post-Covid-19 era (Noehrer, Gilmore, Jay, & Yehudi, 2021).
Embracing a socio-material perspective (Stravand, 2011), the digital transformation of museums and cultural institutions entails a twofold transition of organizational processes and management practices (Imran, Shahzad, Butt, & Kantola, 2021). On the one hand, it involves reconfiguring the hard components of museums and cultural institutions, advancing their value creation capability with technical improvements that add to their ability to address the evolving expectations of the audience in the cyber-physical environment (Lazzaretti, Oliva, Innocenti, & Capone, 2022). On the other hand, it implies reframing the soft side of the service encounter, enacting a service environment where the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic needs of cultural tourists can be fully met (Palumbo, 2022). The digital transformation of museums and cultural institutions should be approached by ensuring an alignment between the hard components of the service offering and the relational attributes of the exchange with cultural tourists (Arrigoni, Schofield, & Trujillo Pisanty, 2020). In fact, favoring the materiality of digital transformation is expected to enact a high-tech, but low-touch cultural service landscape, which falls short in attracting the audience (Palumbo et al., 2021). Conversely, emphasizing relational aspects over material ones might endanger the authenticity of the cultural experience (Navarrete, 2019), thus undermining the ability of museums and cultural institutions to pursue their organizational missions (Boutsiouki & Polydora, 2020). In sum, museums and cultural institutions’ capability to enhance their attractiveness through digital transformation relies on a mix of interventions which are intended to advance their socio-material exchanges with cultural tourists (Palumbo, 2022).
Developing and ensuring the access to an online catalogue which is accessible to visitors in a friendly and easy way represent a preliminary step to reconfigure the museums and cultural institutions’ service offering in the digital setting (Gil-Fuentetaja & Economou, 2019). Alongside enabling organizations to cope with the challenges triggered by the Covid-19 through a relocation of information about the cultural heritage in web-based repositories (Christiansen, 2020), such interventions enhance the accessibility of museums and cultural institutions’ collections (Giammanco, Gitto, & Ofria, 2022). The implementation of online catalogues prevents the disruptions generated by the pandemic (Kirby, 2021), facilitating the access of people to the heritage hosted by cultural institutions and empowering them to maintain a positive exchange with users (Niţu, 2021). From this standpoint, it is assumed that:
Hp. 1
The introduction of online catalogues advances the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to attract visitors in the post-Covid-19 era.
Catalogues’ digitalization is generally accompanied by an increased attention paid to the online presence of museums and cultural institutions (Tranta, Alexandri, & Kyprianos, 2021). Improving the institutional websites and adhering to platforms aimed at promoting and disseminating the cultural heritage has been argued as one of the most common responses of museums and cultural institutions to the challenges generated by the pandemic (Silva, 2021b). Web-based platforms host dynamic and vivid spaces to ensure the continuity and the effectiveness of cultural services’ delivery (Silva et al., 2022). They allow organizations to preserve good and profitable exchanges with the audience, adding to their attractiveness (Mason et al., 2021). Therefore, it is hypothesized that:
Hp. 2
An increased online presence through websites and platforms augments the museums and cultural institutions’ attractiveness in the post-Covid-19 era.
Web 2.0 tools have been largely used by cultural institutions to cope with the unprecedented challenges ushered by Covid-19. Previous studies highlighted that social networks (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) have been widely employed to keep people informed of the organizational activities during the peak of the pandemic (Manca, Passarelli, & Rehm, 2022) and to foster users’ appreciation of the initiatives undertaken by museums and cultural institutions to protect and promote their heritage (Perrella, 2021). Social networking permits museums to establish a bridge with visitors, filling the physical gaps created by social distancing rules (Barrett, 2020). Moreover, it is conducive to an enhanced ability to protect, communicate, and disseminate the cultural heritage, contributing to the museums and cultural institutions’ value creation processes (Manca, 2021). Hence, it is maintained that:
Hp. 3
Social networking allows museums and cultural institutions to generate value for current and prospective visitors, increasing their organizational attractiveness.
The constraints heralded by the spread of Covid-19 heralded a greater visitors’ interest in virtual tours and online exhibitions, which enable people to enter in contact with the cultural heritage without physically visiting the site (Pourmoradian, Salek Farrokhi, & Hosseini, 2021). Such initiatives are generally intended at recontextualizing the visiting experience in the digital domain, allowing cultural tourists to enjoy the museums’ heritage by accessing a virtual site through their personal computers and/or mobile devices (Hoffman, 2020). Online exhibitions and virtual tours can be enhanced through virtual reality and augmented reality artifacts (Bordini & Baio Santos, 2021), which enrich the service experience (Mitchell, 2019) and improve the organizational ability to meet the expectations of visitors in the post-Covid-19 era (Palacios et al., 2021). In line with these considerations, it is assumed that:
Hp. 4
Virtual tours and online exhibitions contribute to advancing the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to attract the audience in the post-Covid-19 era.
Alongside shifting towards an increased online presence, museums and cultural institutions might exploit Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and digital devices to advance their service offering (Lagrosen, 2003), providing both physical and virtual visitors with increased opportunities to enjoy the cultural heritage (Guccio et al., 2020; Siglioccolo, Perano, Siano, Pellicano, & Baxter, 2016). Integrating online services in the museums and cultural institutions’ offering enables them to establish a positive and co-creating relationships with the audience (Choi & Kim, 2021). On the one hand, it allows organizations to overcome the social distancing norms ushered by the pandemic, taking advantage of ICTs to design innovative models and approaches to interact with cultural tourists (Markopoulos, Ye, Markopoulos, & Luimula, 2021). On the other hand, it permits museums and cultural institutions to recontextualize their activities in the digital domain (Jin & Min, 2021), facilitating the delivery of timely services amidst the health crisis (Hoffmann, Hölzel, & Henning, 2021). Drawing on these arguments, it is assumed that:
Hp. 5
The delivery of online services adds to the museums and cultural institutions’ capability to attract the audience amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
Innovative solutions enabled by pervasive ICTs and digital devices are critical to revisit the museums and cultural institutions’ service offering in a perspective of users’ engagement (Resta, Dicuonzo, Karacan, & Pastore, 2021). Digitalization enacts new opportunities for museums and cultural institutions, which can rely on web-based platforms, ICTs, and digital solutions to involve people in service co-production and value co-creation (Cordova-Rangel & Caro, 2021; Palumbo & Fakhar Manesh, 2021). Furthermore, digitalization empowers organizations to augment the visiting experience according to a people-centered approach (Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, 2022). Reconfiguring the cultural activities delivered by museums and cultural institutions in the cyber-physical context generates increased opportunities for cultural tourists’ engagement, paving the way for adopting an interactive experience design in arranging the service offering (Li et al., 2021). From this standpoint, it is hypothesized that:
Hp. 6
Innovative services intended to entice cultural tourists leveraging user engagement and people-centeredness enhance the museums and cultural institutions’ attractiveness in the post-Covid-19 world.
An empirical study was designed to test the research hypotheses, with the purpose of shedding light on the initiatives which mostly contribute to augmenting the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to attract tourists and thrive amidst the spread of the pandemic.
3 Methods
3.1 Study design
Secondary data were obtained from the census study on museums and cultural institutions (e.g., art galleries and monuments) accomplished by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture. The census study was intended to collect information about the consequences of Covid-19 on the organization and management of museums and cultural institutions. Besides, it was aimed at identifying practices and approaches enabling museums and cultural institutions to achieve a greater organizational resilience and cope with the challenges raised by the pandemic. Detailed information about the survey is available in the methodological report published by the ISTAT and available online (2022a).
The ISTAT survey was addressed to all museums and cultural institutions operating in Italy. Drawing on the definition of the International Council of Museums, the population of museums and cultural institutions consisted of permanent organizations serving the development of the society through the protection, promotion, and dissemination of the cultural heritage, without pursuing a profit orientation. Either the executive director or the person in charge for management of the organization were contacted by ISTAT to obtain information about the management attributes of the unit of analysis and the approaches taken to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. Respondents were provided with personal credentials to access the online survey, which was delivered between March and September 2021 and focused on the organizational activities and initiatives implemented throughout 2020. Both publicly owned and privately owned cultural institutions were contemplated in the census study. More specifically, 4,219 museums and cultural institutions were originally involved in the census study.
3.2 Sample
A preliminary analysis was accomplished on the whole population of museums and cultural institutions participating to the ISTAT census study. Since our main purpose was to shed light into the initiatives which enabled museums and cultural institutions to survive the Covid-19 pandemic and enhanced their capability to attract cultural tourists despite the constraints introduced by national and international regulating bodies, we decided to dismiss those organizations which were open to visitors for less than 50 days. This decision permitted us to exclusively focus on those cultural institutions which endeavoured to thrive amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and implemented innovative management practices advancing their organizational attractiveness.
This criterion led us to remove 1,251 units of analysis from the original sample, which, on average, were accessible only for 24 days (σ = 14). Table 1 displays the main attributes of the organizations which were included in our empirical research (n = 2,968). Museums and art galleries covered more than 2 in 3 units of analysis (75.8%), with the remaining part consisting of monuments (16.3%) and archaeological parks (7.9%). The Northern part of Italy accounted for most institutions included in this research: more than 1 in 4 were located in the North-western part of the Italy (27.5%), whilst about 1 in 7 were established in the North-eastern part of the country (14.1%). Central Italy hosted a third of the museums and cultural institutions investigated in this research (33.4%), whilst Southern Italy (12.4%) and main Italian islands (12.6%) represented a much more limited part of the sample.
Most museums and cultural institutions were concerned with subjects related to archaeology (24.1%). Classic and modern arts (19.6%) and ethnography and anthropology (17.9%) followed. History and science represented the main area of interest of about 1 in 7 cultural institutions (14.7%). Architecture (9.2%) and religion (7.7%) were fairly represented in the study sample. Publicly owned cultural institutions (69.2%) largely prevailed over privately owned ones (30.8%). The majority were small-sized entities with less than 4 employees (64.3%). The remaining part of the sample was evenly distributed between medium-sized organization with more than 3 and less than 10 employees (19.8%) and large-sized institutions with more than 10 employees (15.9%). On average, each institution involved in this study was visited by 12,000 cultural tourists (σ = 60,302.6). Altogether, the units of analysis hosted more than 35 million cultural tourists throughout 2020. This figure is significantly lower than the number of visitors registered during the pre-pandemic period, which summed up to about 128 million people (ISTAT, 2022b).
3.3 Statistical approach and measures
A generalized linear regression model was designed to test the hypotheses and provide a tentative answer to the research question that inspired this study. We made an attempt to account for the special challenges faced by small-sized, medium-sized, and large-sized cultural institutions. Hence, three different statistical models were run, which concerned: (1) organizations employing less than 4 people; (2) organizations employing more than 3 and less than 10 people; and (3) organizations employing more than 9 people.
As reported in Table 2, the number of cultural tourists (VIS) who physically visited the site during 2020 – i.e., in the immediate aftermath of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic – represented the response variable of our regression model. Acknowledging the shortcomings produced by a skewed distribution of the response variable, a logarithmic transformation was applied. This enabled us to obtain a more normalized distribution of people who accessed the cultural institutions in 2020. VIS was handled as a proxy of the museums and cultural institutions’ attractiveness, permitting us to assess which kind of interventions were most relevant to enhance their ability to meet the evolving needs of the audience amidst the pandemic.
Consistently with the research hypotheses, six dimensions were included among the explanatory variables of our statistical model. Firstly, we investigated whether the units of analysis implemented online digital catalogues (DC) to facilitate the users’ access to timely information about the cultural heritage. Secondly, we checked whether the organizations increased their activities in the main institutional website or in cultural web platforms (IW) to augment their capability to enter in contact with the audience. Thirdly, we focused on the museums and cultural institutions’ readiness to exploit web 2.0 tools, such as social networks (SN), to enrich the channels of interactions with current and prospective visitors. Fourthly, attention was paid to the commitment of the units of analysis to expand their service offering, delivering virtual guided tours (VT) to the audience which enabled people to remotely enjoy the cultural offering. Fifthly, we assessed whether the museums and cultural institutions arranged online value-added services (VA) – e.g., educational courses, literacy promotion initiatives, and laboratories – fostering their capability to attract the audience through channels other than the physical visit. Finally, we gauged the organizational propensity to introduce innovative approaches (IA) to engage the audience, including gamification and streaming of social events. All these factors were measured as dichotomous variables, with “1” indicating that the institutions undertook them to deal with the challenges triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and “0” indicating that the measure was not adopted.
4 Findings
Italian museums and cultural institutions implemented heterogeneous initiatives to cope with the challenges generated by Covid-19 and boost their organizational attractiveness. A limited number of small-sized institutions accelerated the transition towards online digital catalogues to increase the visitors’ access to their collections (13.8%). About 1 in 4 small-sized entities arranged tailored online environments to deliver training courses and laboratories (24%) and enable remote visitors to enjoy virtual guided tours (29.8%). Almost half of small-sized cultural institutions enhanced their presence in the institutional website (40.1%) to establish a better exchange with the audience and designed value-added services to augment the visitors’ experience of their cultural heritage (47.9%). In most cases, web 2.0 tools and social networking were exploited by small-sized museums and cultural institutions (66.6%) to overcome the backlash of the pandemic.
Medium-sized cultural organizations greatly relied on social networking (81.5%) to maintain positive relationships with the audience. They also enriched their activities in the institutional website (58.9%), but they were less responsive in making their digital catalogue accessible online to users (16.8%). About a third of medium-sized museums and cultural institutions augmented their service offering, enabling people to enjoy virtual guided tours (42.3%) and delivering laboratories, training courses, and literacy promotion initiatives through web platforms (33.8%). Half of medium-sized organizations designed people-centered services to attract the audience amidst the pandemic (50.4%).
About 1 in 5 large-sized organizations improved their online digital catalogue, enabling people to remotely access it (19.5%). Moreover, 2 in 3 large-sized entities increased their presence in the institutional website (65.2%) and crafted people-centered services (65.4%) to meet the evolving expectations and needs of the audience in the post-Covid-19 era. Both virtual guided tours (49.5%) and online value-added services (43.9%), such as laboratories and training courses, were exploited by a remarkable part of large-sized cultural institutions. Finally, web 2.0 was acknowledged as a critical channel to handle the exchanges with the audience amidst the pandemic (87.5%).
Table 3 shows the results of Model 1, which focused on small-sized organizations. An increased presence in the institutional website did not seem to affect the capability of museums and cultural institutions to attract visitors in the post-Covid-19 era. Furthermore, the arrangement of virtual guided tours and the delivery of innovative services centered on people did not significantly influence the attractiveness of the small-sized entities. On the one hand, the implementation of digital catalogues accessible to virtual visitors was negatively and significantly associated with the number of people who accessed small-sized museums and cultural institutions in 2020 (β = -0.218; significant at the 0.001 level). On the other hand, social networking (β = 0.247; significant at the 0.001 level) and value-added services, including laboratories and training courses (β = 0.176; significant at the 0.001 level), positively and significantly boosted the attractiveness of small-sized organizations.
The results of Model 2, which contemplated medium-sized museums and cultural institutions, are depicted in Table 4. An increased volume of activities in the institutional website was found to be positively and significantly related to the organizational ability to attract tourists throughout 2020 (β = 0.247; significant at the 0.01 level). Moreover, enhancing the presence of the cultural institution on social networks was found to have a positive, but weakly significant association with organizational attractiveness (β = 0.247; significant at the 0.10 level). Neither the introduction of digital catalogues accessible to users nor the exploitation of web platforms to enrich the service offering seemed to influence the medium-sized museums and cultural institutions’ ability to entice cultural tourists.
Table 5 summarizes the output of Model 3, which involved large-sized museums and cultural institutions. The implementation of digital catalogues, the arrangement of virtual guided tours, and the online delivery of value-added services were not associated with the large-sized entities’ attractiveness. The expansion of activities in the institutional website was positively, but weakly related to a larger number of cultural tourists (β = 0.145; significant at the 0.10 level). The design of people-centered initiatives was positively and significantly associated with the ability of museums and similar institutions to attract visitors (β = 0.247; significant at the 0.01 level). Social networking acted as a relevant and significant trigger of visits to large-sized organizations amidst the Covid-19 pandemic (β = 0.537; significant at the 0.001 level).
5 Discussion
The results of hypotheses’ testing are synthesized in Table 6, which provides us with intriguing insights to answer the research question at the basis of this article. Museums and cultural institutions undertook various initiatives to cope with the challenges ushered by Covid-19 and advance their organizational viability (Crooke, 2020). Social networking (Kist, 2020) and conventional web-based tools, such as the institutional website and cultural platforms (Cicerchia & Solima, 2021), represented the most common solutions contemplated by museums and cultural institutions to establish a continuous and vivid relationship with the audience and communicate their service offering amidst the pandemic (Orlandi, 2020). In addition, museums and cultural institutions strived for reframing their service offering in a perspective of people-centeredness, endeavouring for engaging visitors in an active and captivating service experience (Tully, 2020). Otherwise, they were cautious in implementing a digitalization of their collections which enabled people to access their catalogues online. This is surprising, since digital catalogues serve a twofold purpose of preserving the integrity of the cultural heritage (Kennedy et al., 2022) and facilitating the users’ access to it (Palumbo et al., 2021).
These findings are consistent with a socio-material understanding of the digital transformation experienced by museums and cultural institutions to deal with the unprecedented challenges enacted by the pandemic (Turner, 2017). On the one hand, the materiality of digital transformation enables museums and cultural institutions to overcome disruptions in the protection and promotion of the cultural heritage, ensuring their operativity despite unforeseen environmental threats (Hansson et al., 2020). On the other hand, the digital transition of museums and cultural institutions should keep a focus on the social needs and expectations of cultural tourists, putting ICTs and digital tools at the service of the users’ experience (Batat, 2019). Consistently with these arguments, a large part of museums and cultural institutions decided not to undertake a comprehensive digital transformation of their core services, avoiding the delivery of virtual guided tours and web-based value-added services to their audience. The digitalization of such services might enhance the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to address the evolving needs of the audience, overcoming restrictions dictated by social distancing (Ivanov, Webster, Stoilova, & Slobodskoy, 2022). Nevertheless, it might compromise the authenticity of the contact with the cultural heritage (Hume & Mills, 2011), impoverishing the service experience (Cardozo & Papadopoulos, 2021). This has side effects on the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions, undermining their long-term viability (Palumbo, 2022).
The study findings highlighted that the effectiveness of interventions designed by museums and cultural institutions to survive the Covid-19 pandemic was influenced by the dimensional attributes of the organization within which they were implemented. Online digital catalogues accessible to remote users did not enhance the organizational attractiveness of the units of analysis, leading us to reject Hp. 1. This outcome points out that digital catalogues are crucial to advance the cultural institutions’ ability to preserve and document information about their collections (Turner, 2016). However, they fall short in attracting cultural tourists, especially when the latter are interested in having a direct experience of the cultural heritage (Reading, 2003).
Small-sized museums and cultural institutions did not benefit from increasing their activity in their institutional websites. Alternatively, both medium-sized and large-sized organizations augmenting their exchanges with the audience though web platforms achieved increased organizational attractiveness. Hence, Hp. 2 was partially supported. This result confirms that small-sized museums lag in building a digital identity on the internet and in differentiating the channels used to get in contact with the audience (Leoni & Cristofaro, 2021). Furthermore, they do not have adequate resources to develop a fully-fledged digital communication strategy through their institutional websites, which are usually characterized by limited accessibility (Argyropoulos & Kanari, 2019). Medium and large-sized cultural institutions are more successful in recontextualizing their relationship with interlocutors in the digital environment (Orlandi et al., 2018), although scholars and practitioners are consistent in claiming that institutional websites and web platforms are underexploited to enhance their organizational attractiveness (Cristobal-Fransi, Ramón-Cardona, Daries, & Serra-Cantallops, 2021).
Social networks have been widely used by museums and cultural institutions to reach people at their own home and make them aware of the cultural service offering amidst the spread of the pandemic (McGrath, 2020). Social networking enables organizations to overcome the shortcomings triggered by Covid-19, acting as virtual environments where cultural institutions exploit web 2.0 tools to engage the audience and attract it (Ryder, Zhang, & Hua, 2021). In line with these arguments, the museums and cultural institutions which endeavoured to increase their activities in social media disclosed a greater organizational attractiveness, thus confirming Hp. 3. Alongside establishing a bridge allowing a vivid exchange of information between cultural institutions and their audience (King, Smith, Wilson, & Williams, 2021), social networking empowers organizations to meet the evolving expectations of particular categories of cultural tourists, such as the millennials, thus adding to their organizational attractiveness (Manna & Palumbo, 2018).
As previously anticipated, virtual tours delivered online were not found to enhance the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to attract the audience: therefore, Hp. 4 was rejected. Virtual guided tours might serve as a powerful instrument to overcome the physical closure enforced by lockdown and/or by restrictive measures intended to halt the spread of the pandemic (El-Said & Aziz, 2022). Besides, they are consistent with the special needs of home travellers, who appreciate a cultural experience which is intermediated by ICTs and digital technologies and are willing to substitute it with the physical visit (Mastroberardino et al., 2021). Nonetheless, virtual guided tours do not meet the demands of traditional cultural tourists, who are looking for a direct experience of the cultural heritage and are thought to perceive a limited authenticity from virtual tours (Geng, 2022).
Echoing these results, the design and delivery of educational courses, literacy promotion initiatives, and digital laboratories were found to be positively related to organizational attractiveness of small-sized entities, whilst they did not affect the medium and large-sized cultural institutions’ ability to thrive amidst the pandemic. Hence, Hp. 5 was partially supported. This result is consistent with the nature of small-sized cultural institutions, whose viability is affected by their capability to establish a continuous exchange with cultural tourists (Taimre, 2013) and involve them in value co-creation (Doctors & Carter, 2021). This does not apply to medium and large-sized organizations, which might be interested in arranging value-added activities as a way to augment the visitors’ experience through ancillary services (Dal Falco & Vassos, 2017) and/or to enact new sources of revenues (Camarero et al., 2021), rather than as a tool to nurture the organizational attractiveness (Palumbo, 2022).
The introduction of innovative services centered on people and intended to engage visitors exploiting web-based services did not improve the attractiveness of small and medium-sized museums, whilst they added to the large-sized organizations’ effectiveness in captivating cultural tourists. From this standpoint, Hp. 6 was partially supported. This result supports the perspective of scholars who have emphasized the positive implications of people-centered services, which are expected to augment the organizational attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions (Camarero, Garrido, & Vicente, 2019). However, this does not fully apply to small and medium-sized organizations, which, although active in innovating their service offering (Brophy & Butters, 2007), rely on the territorial embeddedness of their cultural heritage to entice cultural tourists (Cecalupo, 2017).
6 Conclusion
6.1 Limitations and further developments
The research findings should be read acknowledging the limitations which affected this study. Firstly, since our article focused on the Italian context, it is not possible to claim the findings’ generalizability at the international level. Nevertheless, our study contemplated a large and representative group of museums and cultural institutions operating in Italy, strengthening the reliability of our arguments. Secondly, we did not undertake a longitudinal perspective in accomplishing our empirical study: this prevented us from obtaining compelling evidence of the lengthwise implications of museums and cultural institutions’ initiatives to cope with the special challenges heralded by the pandemic. Lastly, as we relied on secondary sources of data to accomplish this research, it was not possible for us to tailor data collection to the specific aims of our article. Notwithstanding, the ISTAT census study represented a dependable and informative source of data, enabling us to shed light into the capability of museums and cultural institutions to take actions in order to survive the Covid-19 pandemic.
Further research is needed to advance what we currently know about the museums and cultural institutions’ ability to achieve organizational resilience and overcome the unprecedented challenges heralded by the pandemic. First, international studies are required to obtain insights about the institutional factors affecting the readiness of museums and cultural institutions to undertake tailored initiatives intended to overcome the Covid-19. Second, in-depth qualitative research is necessary to achieve fine-grained evidence of which improvements of the cultural service offering contribute to their capability to entice cultural tourists and establish a positive relationship with them. More specifically, attention should be paid to the intertwinement between technological innovations and organizational strategies and management practices, investigating how the digital transformation affects the organizational identity of museums and cultural institutions. Last, but not least, longitudinal research is needed to capture the evolution of the museums and cultural institutions’ service offering and illuminate the strategies and approaches designed by them to cope with the evolving expectations of the audience in the post-Covid-19 era.
6.2 Main implications
The backlash of Covid-19 put under stress the sustainability of museums and cultural institutions. Innovations aimed at protecting and promoting the cultural heritage and enriching the service offering are quintessential to enable museums and cultural institutions to survive the pandemic and thrive in the post-Covid-19 era. Digitalization represents a viable approach to empower organizations, boosting their effectiveness in establishing a continuous and engaging dialogue with the audience and sustaining people in getting in contact with the cultural heritage. However, digital services might crowd out conventional activities implemented by museums and cultural institutions, undermining their ability to entice users who are primarily interested in having a direct experience with the cultural heritage.
The study findings add to our knowledge about the approaches which are most effective in increasing the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions. Initiatives enabling organizations to timely and effectively communicate the distinctive attributes of their cultural heritage and emphasize the authenticity of their collections are critical to maintain a good exchange with cultural tourists in the post-pandemic world. Conversely, interventions focusing on a recontextualization of the service experience in the digital environment might threaten the attractiveness of museums and cultural institutions, impairing the people’s willingness to visit the site. From this standpoint, organizations should pay attention to the approaches they undertake in digitalizing their activities, focusing on value-added measures which empower them to advance their direct interaction with the audience.
Drawing on these considerations, the implications of our research are twofold. From a theoretical perspective, this study invites us to carefully frame the digitalization of museums’ service offering in light of the authenticity of the cultural heritage. Digitalization should not be understood as a neutral instrument, which paves the way for a replacement of the cultural experience in a cyber-physical environment. Rather, it should be intended to enrich the cultural tourists’ fruition of the cultural heritage, fostering a greater willingness to enter in contact with it. From a managerial perspective, cultural institutions should differentiate their strategies and practices to digitalize their activities and cope with the drawbacks of Covid-19. Whilst social networking is essential to establish an effective, timely, and vivid relational bridge with tourists, it is not enough to overcome the unprecedented challenges faced by cultural institutions in the post-Covid-19 era. Hence, social networking should be accompanied by initiatives aimed at augmenting the users’ service experience, adding to the authenticity of the cultural heritage through people-centered initiatives that increase the museums’ organizational attractiveness.
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Palumbo, R. Surviving Covid-19: what museums and cultural institutions can do to attract cultural tourists and get through the pandemic. Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark 20, 905–926 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-022-00359-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-022-00359-x