Tourism and Hospitality Services of Australian National Maritime Museum

Running head: Tourism management
Tourism at national maritime museum
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author notes

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Executive summary
The Australian national maritime museum (NMM) is known as an important tourist attraction
and largest museum in the world. Having the largest collection of objects, this museum has
taken the decision of being digitised. However, sometimes handling the large amount of
collection creates complexities for the museum management. The aim of this report is to
discuss about the tourism and hospitality services of the NMM. Its strengths and weaknesses
of it from the visitors’ point of view along with the marketing activities of this is going to be
discussed here.

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Introduction
As opined by Mariani et al., (2014), the tourism and hospitality industry has shown a
greater contribution to the economics of the country. Being one of the largest industry in the
world, the travel and tourism industry encompasses more than 9.3% of the whole gross
domestic products. Tourism explains the summation of relationships rising out of all the
activities of people travelling to a particular place and staying in that places outside their
usual environment. Meanwhile, hospitality industry shows concerns about the food,
accommodation and beverage for individuals away from their homes (van der Zee and
Vanneste 2015). This report is going to focus on the world’s famous tourist place the national
maritime museum. With a description of the tourism and hospitality industry, the report is
going to give a discussion about the selected museum, its strengths and weaknesses from the
viewers’ point of view. In addition, the marketing activities for enhancing the visitors
experience is also going to be discussed in this report.
Tourism and hospitality
Tourism management comprises with all the activities that are associated with a travel
planning. On flip, the hospitality management is encompasses list of activities that focuses
towards providing food, accommodation and other such facility to the individual at a certain
cost. Providing a series of job opportunities and collecting higher amount of profit, the
hospitality and tourism industry has always shown major contribution towards the economy
of the country. Presence of the hospitality as well as tourism industries has enhanced the
visiting experience of the customers. One such tourist place is the Australia based National
maritime museum. The additional information regarding this is going to describe in below.

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The National Maritime Museum (NMM)
Located in the Darling harbour, Sydney, the national maritime museum is not only the
Australia’s but also world’s biggest museum and a great tourist attraction. The National
Maritime Museum, located in Australia mainly focuses towards preserving and showcasing
the astronomical observations, ships, stars, time, and a lot other unique items that are rare and
not available in any other museum (Warrior 2013). In simple terms, the NMM is ideally
dedicated to explain the relationship or bond between the mankind, nature and its creations.
Strengths and weaknesses
Biggest strength of this museum is that it serves the main purpose of its establishment.
Providing comfortable tourism facilities and enhanced experience to the visitors has become
another strength of NMM (Lee and Smith 2015). More than two million objects are present in
the museum’s kitty; which makes it world’s largest museum. In order to provide clear
thoughts and better visiting experience, the entire museum has divided into three sections:
Royal Observatory, Queen’s House and the Maritime galleries. Another fact that recently
added as the strength of this museum is its digitation. As per the recent information gathered,
NMM is providing online access to over more than 250,000 catalogue records along with
more than 90,000 images to the viewers (sea.museum 2020).
However, the museum also has some weaknesses to which the management need to
put more focus for betterment. Due to having a huge amount of collections, it becomes
difficult for the management to handle these efficiently. Additionally, absence of film archive
also considered as a weakness of this museum. Though the archive is already owned by
NMM as an important asset but absence of proper acquisition and item numbers apart from
those issued by the department (Hede et al., 2014). Though the decision of digitizing the
collection is great; yet, digitization can affect the on ship plans, charts, manuscripts and

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photographs, and also put impact on the subject areas. In addition, storing the digital
resources can create complicacies due to the need for collecting hardware for displaying it,
and supporting it in future.
Tourism attraction attributes
The main attraction of a tourist place is weighted by factors like carrying capacity,
ownership, status, accessibility and the market. The ownership of the discussed museum has
given to the government of Australia via the department of communication and the arts
(Wintle 2015). The carrying capacity of this museum can be measured by the total number of
objects present in it. According to recent information, till now, more than two million objects
are inside it. The museum has many function rooms named as Lighthouse Gallery, HMAS
Vampire South Wharf, HMAS Vampire, Terrace Room, Yots Room, Endeavour Pavilion and
many others. Discussing about the accessibility to the museum, it can be said that, with views
of Darling Harbour along with the glittering city skyline, the NMM is located at the heart of
Sydney. Placed at a most convenient place for the visitors, the museum has stands out as one
spectacular architectural and distinctive icon having a unique maritime flavour (Tao 2016). In
order to attract the visitors, the management of this museum has adopted different marketing
and promotion strategies.
Management planning and decisions
In order to attract more number of visitors and enhance the attraction of this place, it
is necessary for the management of the museum to put more focus on the planning and
decision making programs. The one thing that is essential is to make an efficient museum
management plan. Reviewing and upgrading the museum documentation is essential along
with successful recordkeeping for giving adequate legal documentation. Moreover, as NMM

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is digitizing, it is essential for the management to focus on the involvement of improved
information management tools for providing better access. Making strategies for achieving
higher profit and increasing the number of visitors and methods for improving the visitors’
experience must be included in the planning and decision making process.
Generic factors for attracting the visitors
Enhancing the visitor experience is an important concern for improving the reputation
and profitability of a museum. In order to provide better experience to the visitors, the
museum management need to have friendly and well-trained docents present for welcoming
the visitors. Providing direction to each corner of the museum by clear signs or using video
monitoring system is also helpful (Betts 2018). The museum management need to make their
place more interactive. Use of different modern interactive technologies such as, touch
screen, motion sensor along with several display tools will make the museum more
interactive. Among all the existing museum in the world, NMM evidence the most number of
visitors per day. Hence, it is essential for the management to make sure that each single
visitor will have equal opportunity of viewing the objects. Therefore, it is necessary to control
the flow of traffic inside the museum. Crafting enjoyable and memorable visitor experience is
important for improving the reputation of the museum.
Marketing activities
Regardless of the business, marketing activities plays a major role in improving the
stability and sustainability of it. With the enhancement of different digital marketing
strategies, more opportunities for business are available to advertise and boost their business.
Adoption of efficient marketing strategies will not only improve the profitability and brand
image of the business, rather it will create higher competitive advantages for it (Chung,
Marcketti and Fiore 2014). Social media marketing can be recommended as the efficient

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marketing tactic for this museum. The marketing mangers of it can create account on
different social media platforms and share their information for attracting more number of
visitors. Using different social media platforms for example Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter and many such can attract the visitors. Sharing information, photos and videos of this
museum can gather more number of visitors. Al most every age group of individuals stay
active on social media. Hence providing information on social media platforms can aware
people more effectively.
Conclusion
Hence, in conclusion, it can be said that not only creating jobs, but also making higher
contribution to the economy and providing better experience to the travellers, tourism and
hospitality industry stays in front. Australia based the national maritime museum is known as
world’s largest museum. Combining more than two million objectives, this museum always
look forward to achieve its purpose of establishment. This report has discussed about the
strengths and weaknesses of this museum from the point of view of its visitors. In addition,
the tourism attraction attributes such as ownership, carrying capacity, accessibility and
marketing in context of NMM has discussed here. With an explanation of the necessary
factors for enhancing the visiting experience of the visitors, the report has also highlighted
the most suitable marketing activity for NMM.

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Reference
Betts, J. 2018. Marine Chronometers at Greenwich: A Catalogue of Marine Chronometers at
the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Oxford University Press.
Chung, T.L., Marcketti, S. and Fiore, A.M., 2014. Use of social networking services for
marketing art museums. Museum Management and Curatorship, 29(2), pp.188-205.
Hede, A.M., Garma, R., Josiassen, A. and Thyne, M., 2014. Perceived authenticity of the
visitor experience in museums. European Journal of Marketing.
Lee, H.M. and Smith, S.L., 2015. A visitor experience scale: historic sites and museums.
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Wintle, C., 2015. Models as cross-cultural design: ethnographic ship models at the National
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