Museums in the Digital Age

Abstract

In terms of destination image, museums represent a tourism resource of the first magnitude. However, just as the information available online influences visitors’ decision-making about destinations, the internet is also fundamental in promoting and attracting visitors to museums. For that reason, we sought to analyse the online presence of museums in the seven most visited cities in Spain. To examine the museums’ websites, we developed an integrative model based on web content analysis (WCA ) and the extended model of internet commerce adoption (eMICA) that we applied to 77 publicly and privately run museums in Spain. Both WCA and the eMICA indicated that, despite their great economic and touristic scope, museums in Spain's most visited cities tend to mismanage their online presence and communication. We thus tentatively attributed the online presence of museums in Spain to type of museum management and several city-related parameters as explanatory variables. Multiple linear regressions of the variables revealed that, under public management, museums have had better online presence, while their respective cities have attracted more tourists. Those findings imply that museums still have a long way to go when it comes to facilitating effective communication and interaction with their target public, which we address in relation to the study's limitations and directions for future research.