Case Study: Developing Tourism Through Heritage and Culture

This report examines the relationship between heritage, culture, and tourism, focusing on the role of museums in driving economic growth. It presents a theoretical discussion of heritage in relation to museums and provides a case study analysis of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The report evaluates the museum's location, exhibitions, interpretation methods, infrastructure, marketing strategies, and audience engagement techniques. It highlights the museum's efforts to attract diverse audiences through various programs and exhibitions. The study emphasizes how museums are adapting to meet the needs of modern society and attract larger audiences, ultimately contributing to the growth of the tourism sector. Desklib provides access to this and many other solved assignments to aid students in their studies.

Running Head: Heritage and Culture
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Heritage and Culture
Report
Student Name
3/7/2019

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Executive Summary
Heritage and culture gives an advantage to the country to improve its tourism industry.
Development of tourism sector is essential and consider as the most important tool for
economic growth. It has been identified that museum plays a major role in the growth of
tourism sector with their changing role for attracting the audiences to serve best collection and
services to people for improving their experience. The report include role of museum in
developing the tourism sector and for that Fitzwilliam museum of Cambridge is evaluated and
analyzed. The report focuses on how they share their world class collections and research to
the public through conducting programs and exhibitions in museum and the ways opted by
museum to attract national and international audiences. Main highlight of the study is that how
museums changing their role as per the requirement of modern society and to attract larger
audiences to visit museums.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................................3
2. Heritage and Culture: Museum...........................................................................................................4
2.1 Theoretical discussion of heritage in relation to museum.................................................................4
3. Case Study: Fitzwilliam Museum.........................................................................................................6
3.1 Analysis and Evaluation of Fitzwilliam Museum................................................................................6
3.1.1 Location......................................................................................................................................7
3.1.2 Exhibitions and Collections.........................................................................................................7
3.1.3 Forms of Interpretation..............................................................................................................8
3.1.4 Space and Infrastructure............................................................................................................9
3.1.5 Marketing...................................................................................................................................9
3.1.6 Engaging Audiences....................................................................................................................9
3.2 Development of larger and more diverse audiences.......................................................................10
4. Conclusion.........................................................................................................................................11
5. References.........................................................................................................................................12
6. Appendix............................................................................................................................................14
Appendix 1.............................................................................................................................................14
Appendix 2.............................................................................................................................................14
Appendix 3.............................................................................................................................................15
Appendix 4.............................................................................................................................................15

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1. Introduction
Heritage is something that is essential to be passed on the future generations. Heritage
practices deserved to be preserved for next generations. Some of the practices which are not
seen but passed down from previous generations include customs, habits, language, culture,
music and literature (Park, 2013). It provides people a bond to certain social values, beliefs,
religions and customs that let them to characterize with others of similar attitudes and
environment. Culture and Heritage provides a certain sense of unity and belongingness within a
group and help people to understand the ancient time and the past of where they come from
(Timothy, 2011).
Culture, heritage, and tourism are connected to each other and getting importance all over the
world. In tourism industry, culture and heritage plays an essential role and proves as the most
powerful economic development tool.
It comprises of wide scope of presenting both intangible and tangible elements:
Intangible Cultural Heritage Tangible Cultural Heritage
 Languages  Monuments
 Tradition  Archaeological Sites
 Myths, Beliefs and rituals  Historic urban areas
 Value System  Vernacular Heritage
 Signs and Symbols  Cultural Landscapes
The natural history and heritage of the nation is valuable and unique for the citizens. It is a
character of the country that can be presented to the world. All cultural and heritage things are
important due to their economic value as well as they create an emotion with the citizens of
the country and give them a feeling that they belong to something – a country, a tradition, a
way of life (Inglese & Ippolito, 2019).
The ancient parts in countries are making efforts for promoting heritages sites of regional
development attracting tourism and sustaining cultural heritage of the country (Timothy, 2011).
Preserving culture and heritage sites are important and require efforts of government, from
cultural heritage funding organization for development and reconstruction (Stefano, et al.,
2012). Tourism is an essential section for the economy of developing country. There are many
reasons that attract the visitors towards heritage sites some are; developing relationship and
socializing with family and friends, sightseeing, seeking spiritual experiences , exercising,
relaxing and escapism are some of the motivators behind visiting heritage and culture sites. The

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heritage and culture of the country should be preserved and can be done only through sharing
it with others (McKercher & Cros, 2012).
2. Heritage and Culture: Museum
Heritage and cultural tourism is considered as the most needed aspect of economic
development in the world (Park, 2013). Related to the museums the cultural heritage is
becoming more popular in the world; Museums are the cultural institutions of the country and
have long been associated with the tangible aspects of the collections and at present scenario
more tourists are attracted towards the heritage sites compare to earlier footfalls due to the
continuous change in museums in this digital era (Groot, 2016). The general obligation of
museum is to share the information with their visitors about the culture of the country, ancient
time and natural attracted sites of their country or about a topic which is of interested area
while also conserving all these things for the future generations (Basu & Modest, 2015). The
existence of museum helps in sharing something valuable and relevant to public and also main
work of any museum is to reserve the cultural heritage which can help in attracting the tourist
of different areas.
2.1 Theoretical discussion of heritage in relation to museum
Museums have a long history, the museum culture reach to nearly every part of the world and
now it become uncommon to find any country that does not have museums which reflect their
culture and heritage. The role of museum in present scenario changes compare to traditional
roles, earlier museums is to gather objects and materials of culture, religious and historic
importance, display them, research into them and present them to the public for education,
enjoyment and learning purposes (Black, 2012).
The new model is that a museum functions to provide appealing and memorable museum
experiences. This change is been defined as a shift of museum from collection to attracting the
people or the concept of audience development is adopted by many museum around the
world. It is a concept or strategy aims to make stronger the relationship with public, give proper
social facilities to public and increasing the museums social value. The process of developing
audiences includes providing information on visitors and non-visitors, existing and potential
audiences and their attitudes, expectations and sources of satisfaction. Modern museum are
approachable for the public for education, exhibition, outreach, documentation, research and
publications within or outside the museum (Falk & Dierking, 2018).
Most of the people have different perception, they perceive museum as non-social, non-
dynamic and non-participatory places that arises the requirement for museum to make more
pleasant and interactive connection for that group which can help in changing the thinking of all
negative audiences. The people have mental image that influence their decision making and

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expectations before visiting a museum, this negative perception present many challenges for
the museum to get visitors through the door specially those who have negative attitudes
towards the museums or heritage sites (Black, 2012). Therefore, the museums at present
focuses on improving the positive external image in order to diversify the audience base and
aimed to make difference in human behavior in order to influence those person who do not
visit museum because they think heritage sites are not their cup of tea or not for them.
Museums are working on meeting the needs of current visitors as well as encouraging the new
audiences for growth and popularity of these cultural sites.
Another element that is used to improve museum going experience includes improving services
for visitors such as seating facility, social interaction rooms and restaurants which satisfy the
visitors need of entertainment, attract more audiences and inspire visitors to connect with
museums for longer time. Social spaces for social interaction are main area of concentration
for twenty first century museums experiences which promote people to visit many times in the
museums and attract number of audiences (Falk, 2016).
With regards to museums, the requirements to improve services to fulfill the need of diverse
audiences have become necessity to attract larger audiences and increase the footfall. The
impact of fast changing dynamics forces of modern society also affected the ways in which
museums management and promotion is done, museum are focusing on diversifying their
social and cultural functions and improving all services to widen their collections. To attract the
larger audiences some strategies are being incorporated in modern museums such as
application of new technologies, utilization of social media tools, digitalizing and sensory
experiences that changes are needed to increase the attraction of visitors in present
(Carayannis, et al., 2018).
The United Kingdom is amongst the most popular destinations in the world because of history,
culture and heritage. Museum in the country attract millions of domestic and international
visitors and have major impression on producing economic benefits into tourism in the way of
creating more jobs and by redevelopment of areas. Heritage tourism provides more than £30
billion to the country’s GDP. According to Nation Brands Index in 2017, UK was ranked third for
tourism industry because of its historic buildings, museums and having a vibrant city life with
natural beauty. On considering the overall brand, the UK stood third out of 50 nations and
tourism contribute £127 billion to the country’s economy by creating jobs and increasing
growth within its nations and regions (Edginton & Beer, 2018).
The University of Cambridge have large number of museums and that brings some unique
collections of more than seven million artworks and artifacts. All these art can be seen in these
museums: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Kettle’s Yard, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
Museum of zoology, Museum of Classical Archaeology, Whipple Museum of the history of

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science, Sedgwick museum of Earth sciences, The Polar Museum and Botanic Garden
(Cambridge, 2019).
In the current study, discussion will focus on various factors that can help in attracting the more
visitors towards heritage and cultural of museum in the UK. Furthermore, the discussion will
focus on the deep insight of Fitzwilliam Museum facts and figures of attracting audiences or
development of strategies to attract larger audiences to the museum.
3. Case Study: Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the main museum in the University of Cambridge and is an
institution for research of the university under the administration of the General Board and
controlled by Fitzwilliam museum association. It is an accredited museum in the University of
Cambridge from eight museums, amongst that five museums are labeled as being national or
international importance and all eight museums are under the administration of the General
Board, including Botanic Garden. Fitzwilliam museum including all eight museums contain the
biggest part of accredited and selected collections in the UK and are the major culture
contributor for Cambridge and there surrounding areas, far reaching public and an educational
program which attracts a million people of all ages and background every year (Cambridge,
2019).
The Fitzwilliam Museum is situated on trumping ton Street, Cambridge, and now has 550,000
objects in its collection departments. In 2016, museum enters in its third century and
celebrated the Bicentenary of its foundation. The museum is focusing on attracting different
audiences by creating a unique profile and reputation in innovation and working on extending
the wide range of communities it serve through partnerships and collaboration at regional and
local level (Ward & Knox, 2016).
The analysis of this case focuses on the Fitzwilliam Museum strategy to enhance the experience
and participation of visitors and to know how museum serve to community for raising
awareness in local areas and development of larger audience is key area for studying the case.
3.1 Analysis and Evaluation of Fitzwilliam Museum
In 2016, The Fitzwilliam Museum served more than 437,000 visitors and conducted 14
exhibitions during the year and approximately 25,000 people were engaged in education
activities. During that time the museum organized many programs for young people and
generated £4,826,000 of revenue from income and sponsorship and also attracted diverse
audiences because of public programs, making museum inclusive and through digital
engagement (Ward & Knox, 2016).

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Fitzwilliam museum has large varieties of art, fossils, mineral and collection of drawing and
painting, museum is rich in collection as that is the key strength to attract the public interest in
visiting museum. Other benefits that are analyzed includes website of the Fitzwilliam museum
which is easy to understand and give all related guide for the visitors and its location is also a
strength; this museum is located in center of the town in Cambridge which have more number
of visitors as compare to all other museums in the country (Museum, 2019).
Pleasant experience is must in museums; visitors can feel the culture and history when they
visited museum. In case of Fitzwilliam museum, welcoming need to be improved as at the time
of arrival no member from staff is there to guide or provide information which gives a feeling of
disrespect and visitors may feel confused as they do not have idea from where to start.
On the basis of analysis it can be seen that nowadays museums have opportunities to improve
their services and provide memorable experience to the audiences with introducing
technological things in the museums. In respect of Fitzwilliam museum they can improve their
services by giving map or guide to visitors and guiding them properly about each collection and
also use touch screen games for engaging audiences.
Furthermore, Fitzwilliam museum is focusing on their marketing plan to which include targeting
the local communities, children and families by conducting various activities and programs for
them, discounting criteria for students and make them feel comfortable so that visitor’s
experience can catch new audiences through word of mouth marketing. All others aspects of
the museum are discuss below in detail to know more about the opportunities, working,
marketing and planning to attract the audiences (Black, 2012).
3.1.1 Location
The Fitzwilliam Museum is situated on trumping ton Street, Cambridge, which was opened in
1848 following to Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion’s bequest in 1816 of his
collections and legacy. The museum building had been constructed drastically over the last
165years, with major changes and alterations in the years 1920s, 1960s, 1970s and early 2000s.
Later in 2000s the museum occupied offsite storage and other buildings for office within
Cambridge (Museum, 2019). The strengths for the Fitzwilliam Museum are its spacious
reception area for groups, lift to all floors, renovated galleries and redisplayed collections and in
addition there is a large café positioned in the courtyard at the heart of the museum with light
and airy space where audiences can sit to plan their visit or gather for special events.
3.1.2 Exhibitions and Collections
The museum is famous for its collections of Antiquities, coins and medals, painting, drawings
and prints. The curators served number of exhibitions, publications, research, teaching
material, online resources and public events. All these efforts make stronger the experience of

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the visitors across the UK and overseas, and sharing new research on the museum’s unique
collections helped in attracting national and international audiences.
Collection which attracts the diverse audiences in Fitzwilliam Museum includes:
 Art of Asia
 Ceramics, Glass & Enamels
 Coins and Medals
 Ancient Furniture and Clocks
 Cyprus
 Islamic Art
 Illuminated Manuscripts
 Fine printed Books
 Paintings, Drawings and Prints
 Silver and Jewelry
 Sculpture, Ivories and Woodwork
The museum organized 15 exhibitions out of that the most important was Madonna’s and
Miracles. Other exhibitions were from the Museum’s Collections included; From Kabul to
Kolkata: Highlights of Indian Painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Elephants, Deities and
Ashoka’s Pillar: Coins of India from Antiquity to the Present and some upcoming exhibitions and
display includes Whistle and nature, Enriching Collections: Recent acquisitions of prints and
drawings 2009-2019, The Frua-Valsecchi collection and Making a nation: Money, image and
power in Tudor and Stuart England (Museum, 2019).
Nowadays, audiences in museum want exhibition and collection that should be interactive and
engaging visitors by providing those programs that motivate visitors to participate and learn
new things through involvement. The Fitzwilliam museum presently focuses on in building
awareness of the events and exhibits, getting positive reaction of the visitors by providing them
some changes in facilities and seeking the word of mouth recommendation for publicity.
3.1.3 Forms of Interpretation
The Fitzwilliam Museum methods of interpretation include digital imaging, modeling, making
and interpretation of 3D culture. Fitzwilliam museum improved labeling in there galleries and
exhibitions and using big font labels and increased the accessibility of museum website and
related resources. The continuous efforts by the museum to improve its technique of
interpretation helps in getting attention of the audiences and making them memorize some
learning. Objects, models, drawings, guide books, videos, working models, human interpreters,
objects for handling and drama are some ways used earlier in traditional museums. The impact
of technological development and use of internet totally transforms the Fitzwilliam museum

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role in serving the society by using interactive multimedia as interpretative medium for heritage
attraction. (Ward & Knox, 2016).
3.1.4 Space and Infrastructure
Maintenance of the museums is necessary to polished the ancient things and sustain it for long
time for audiences. Fitzwilliam museum demands high maintenance and infrastructure because
of the increasing number of visits by visitors, recent changes in infrastructure and some of the
maintenance are done in phases 2 & 3 of the environmental control in the Italian, Spanish and
flower galleries, refurbishment of gallery 3, replacement of roof lights, refurbishment of the
Lower Marley Gallery, the Islamic, Chinese, Korean and Glaisher galleries including upgrading
and replacement of cases. Various projects are carried on for improving the infrastructure of
the museum and managed by University of Cambridge. Projects like providing a new and
purpose built exhibition gallery, a space in which major loan exhibitions can be done without
disturbing the normal running of the museum and a new space which include a ticketing area
and secured facilities for unloading and unpacking loans and focusing on providing some visitor
facilities including front of house welcome, orientation room, cloakroom and improved facilities
for cafes and shops giving more choice to visitors (Ward & Knox, 2016).
3.1.5 Marketing
The marketing budget of Fitzwilliam museum is planned including 35,000 copies of brochure
that will be produced three times in a year and direction maps which will be available in
different languages. The tourism market is important to the museum for that a new augmented
reality app was launched targeting the US and European Market. Press and media coverage is
also a marketing strategy for improving profile of the museum which in return increases
footstep of the citizen for collection and temporary exhibitions (Kotler, et al., 2008). To attract
student visitors locally the Fitzwilliam museum society runs a stall at the Fresher’s fair,
introductory tour and summer garden events.
Marketing strategies for exhibition involve high visibility campaign such as sites on London
underground, lamppost banners, city wide poster sites, visual advertising and flagpole banners
and space for hoardings on the railings.
3.1.6 Engaging Audiences
The research work of museum and its quality and innovation can share through websites to the
audiences for creating awareness and for creating positive outgoing environment the museum
focuses on delivering public programs by taking care of individual needs with cultural spaces
and by collaborating with audiences to plan programs (Deeth, 2012). They created variety of
ways for families to connect through family events, free family visits on first Saturday and also
through art awards sessions for recognizing the young people creative achievements.

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The Fitzwilliam museum has arrangement of targeted programs to access people visiting
independently. These included the launch of e guide collection with free audio that describes
tours for blind and partially sighted visitors. Adults of all age groups can also get attracted with
collections and exhibitions of the museum through programs of talks and tours, this program
worked with more than 2,000 people they attended public talks in the museum itself. Other
way adopted by them for engaging the audiences include knowledgeable workshops led by
specialists and artists for people to give feedback to the collections and exhibitions while
discovering new techniques and late night film screening and musical performances also help
in giving audiences the new experience of the museum out of hours (Ward & Knox, 2016).
3.2 Development of larger and more diverse audiences
Digital technologies are used nowadays to attract the audience toward museums by providing
them information related to the temporary exhibitions, about museum products, events taking
place, opening and closing hours, ticket availability and entry fees. Some social media tools can
be used to promote Fitzwilliam Museum such as blogs, portals, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
and also all these sites help in interacting with the audiences which help museum curator to
provide better services to their visitors and at the same time gaining more number of visitors
(Marty, 2008).
The Fitzwilliam museum has over 132,000 followers on Instragram and has active profile by
sharing content about their latest events, news and activities with followers. They used hash
tags related to the post to share information to diverse audiences and for increasing their
reach. One of the most effective ways to create interest of the younger group toward heritage
and culture is use of social media networks this would spread awareness and make interaction
with this group easier and faster (Kidd, 2011). As Instragram is the third most used social media
network by the younger group or age group of 18-35 years (Statista, 2019), it states that this
group use social media for looking out what is going on locally and for getting knowledge about
cultural activities. Another thing that can be done to attract larger audiences is to encourage
more number of visitors to share their experience on social sites of Fitzwilliam museum which
can motivate others also to visit and take the experience.
Welcoming gives an ever lasting impression on audiences, the more engagement of front line
staff of the museum helps in development of relationship with visitors throughout their visit for
making their experience more pleasant and make them familiar with the cultural venues can
become another strategy for attracting larger audiences during a year.
The era of digitalization helps in sharing information and making the visits of people interacting
by introducing the QR code to each art, after scanning the QR code people will get information
about the artifacts, objects, collections and exhibits (Din & wu, 2014).Maintaining website of
the Fitzwilliam Museum provide facilities to global connectivity, the network of museum is not

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limited within local area or society but attract audiences worldwide through global contacts,
unique interests, different communities and using diverse social networks. Sensory experience
also gives a new experience to the visitors to touch artifacts and feel the past things with
guidance and knowledge from front line staff. These ways of interacting attract the more
visitors to know more about world heritage sites and people can plan their trips which increase
the larger and diverse audiences from different parts of the world.
4. Conclusion
Heritage and culture considered as an important aspect in tourism where visitors experience,
witness and learn about the cultural heritage of a destination. Cultural heritage is mainly of two
types, tangible heritage and intangible heritage. Tangible cultural heritage is the moveable
objects and immovable sites these includes historic buildings, artifacts and monuments.
Intangible culture heritage is defined as practices, knowledge and tradition of the country. All
heritages are unique and irreplaceable that needs to be preserved for the next generation. In
current scenario, heritage sites have seen a remarkable increase in number of visitors mainly in
the museums in UK. Museums are the culture institution that reflects the history and
information of their living and pass it to the world through collections, exhibitions and events.
The role of museum changes due to contemporary society and because of electronic era, now
museums not all focus on presenting their collections or research but all prioritize it to
attracting or developing the larger audiences for the museum.
Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has 550,000 objects in collection and attracts approximately
437,000 visitors during a year. The main challenges for the museums in this digital era is to
change the way they serve to people and adapt the way that attract large number of audiences
for them. The strategies used by Fitzwilliam museum to attract visitors includes 3D virtual
reconstruction of galleries, accessing websites, audio described tour for blinds and QR code for
detailed information on collections. These steps are taken to make museum digitalized and
according to the expectations of modern people and social media tools are also used like blogs,
websites, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. And last but not least, people experience and
learning changes due to use of digital assets in development of larger and more diverse
audiences.