45 euros to visit the Vasari Corridor? The question is not only about the ticket

The news of the Uffizi ’s decision to reopen the Vasari Corridor with a €45 entrance fee is generating considerable debate, and not only among insiders. It must be said that for years immemorial museum ticketing policies in Italy are not new to such debates, even heated ones, in which we often find polarized and opposing positions, divided between those who call for the principles of free access for our institutions (on the British model), to those who instead defend a ticketing generally aligned with European parameters. Thus, that there is work to be done on the issue is a well-known fact, especially given the current inhomogeneity regarding the access offer that we find proposed by our National Museum System, an extraordinary prospect that if done beyond intentions could homogenize even this territorial diversity and between institutes, but which nevertheless remains far from being accomplished.

Returning to the Florentine museum, the issue on entrance fees should perhaps be read from a few different assumptions: first of all, it should be remembered that the debate has overshadowed another project of the Tuscan museum: the Uffizi Diffusi through which a new idea of “cultural mobility” aimed at disseminating content beyond the container, “contaminating” other places, has been opened in our country as well. This means making them more accessible and usable, those contents, then enhancing them and I mean according to a “putting a value” on all the values they carry, not only economic, just by making them more accessible, therefore more manifest and known, multiplying their communicative and attractive power by differentiating the cultural offer (and cascading also the tourist one). We are talking about a project that aims to offer endless new narrative fits and takes the museum outside the museum to reconstruct the broken threads of public participation. In this sense, the important positive potentials are all there: such a project combines the natural “storytelling” capacity of cultural production, and that of “welcoming” and “accompanying” according to a more sustainable visiting (and tourist) mobility. And “who” put in place this paradigm shift is the same museum that today on the “Corridor” issue is being accused of being elitist and discriminatory.

Then perhaps there is more to it, perhaps the whole thing should be interpreted from another point of view: namely, that the cultural sector’s biggest barrier to access is not (only) the cost of admission, it was (and still is) being perceived as “worthy of the time” invested in it. Therefore, when talking about new accessibility to cultural places, a couple of preliminary considerations should be made: first, visitors are not consumers; second: still too often there is a tendency to simplify the cultural experience according to a linear equation of “entry, stop in front of the works, exit.” An experience to be connoted by the equivalent cost of a ticket. An interpretative model, this one, that does not consider the “attractiveness value,” that is, what can really make the difference in whether or not one chooses to enter a museum or enjoy a cultural experience: the objective and subjective sum that arises from the balance between the “time” (interest) and the “cost” of that experience and that becomes “interest value.” A more complex and multifaceted equation.

Then the issue is no longer just the ticket itself, whether it is expensive or not, but the reference to the accessibility of the audiences that is upstream of that strategy, within which the ticket is embedded, and thus the management of the relationships with the different flows of visitors that that admission policy looks to and wants to foster: if one wants to take and evaluate the unit cost of admission to the “Corridor” alone, reading it as an end in itself, as a mere means of exploiting tourists, then the positions that want it to be excessive may rightly prevail (€45 is not a small amount). However, considering the general context of the institute promoting this activity (the Uffizi), and placing it in the right implementation framework, aimed at favoring policies of stabilized loyalty over time, with discounts, cards and subscriptions, rather than incentivizing one-shot tourist massification, i.e. in the perspective of remodeling one’s access programs and consequently also the perception of the value of our heritage, the opposite positions may undoubtedly prevail. And it is toward this second position that, I believe, Director Schmidt is looking with his choices.

In this sense, subscriptions and integrated pricing are already widely used to incentivize a new model of fruition: for example, “non-standard” ticketing policies are not new at Brera: there has been a shift from ticket to card, and from “visitor” to “member,” and this represents a profound (and profoundly just) transformation of the concept of the museum and its accessibility, an opportunity to bring it closer to its community, to offer it to the heart of the city. Because “guest” visitors have one voice, of course, but “members,” those who live a daily relationship with art, but also with services (physical and online) and with museum spaces, not limiting themselves to a single visit, but living them day by day, have another, more conscious one. And that is where we have to look today, and to insights like this one in Brera, through which we can (must) rethink the idea of cultural accessibility and tourism responsibility, to shape a flow of access and make it inclusive and sustainable, which assimilates tourists to citizens without excluding one or the other, but above all to ensure the best possible freedom and participation of fruition. Because a museum’s identity (and its economic model) should be based on everything it does to enhance its collections, not just on visitor numbers as a measure of its success.

Or, as at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art in Bremen, Germany, where they experimented with “flexible” rate ticketing on the pay-per-use model. The principle was simple: the German museum tried a “pay-per-use” admission system based on 10-minute slots. With a visit itinerary, which in its entirety, was calculated to be about 90 minutes, was offered as much an opportunity to pay the full museum ticket (applied from the 91st minute onward) as a fractional ticket, even if only for 10 minutes, paying 1/9th of the full ticket for a short visit of a few minutes, perhaps to see just one room, or one work, but also just to occupy a coffee break rather than being in the park.

An idea that put the museum in a position to cater to an audience with less time or interested only in particular aspects of the museum experience, without harming the needs of other visiting groups: considering the more user-friendly scheme given by the price control, visitors approached with a more carefree approach and liked it, leading to an increase in visits (which offset the decrease in the average ticket cost paid).

A pay-per-use model, this one having the only “limitation” of relying on customer-public awareness and empowerment: in other words, it works only when the public already has a very personal relationship with the institution (which in certain contexts might incentivize a “hit-and-run” model of visitation). But with due caution, why not also try “inversely proportional” time slot tickets? According to the “the longer I stay at the museum, the less I pay” principle, acting precisely on the intrinsic “value perception” of our institutions?

The scheme could be:

Minimum: stay from 1 minute to 59 minutes, maximum price charged at the exit.

Medium: 1hr to 2hr 59min, 2/3 of the price.

Max: from 3 hours or more, 50% off the ticket price.

Obviously bands and costs would depend on the type of institution.

Returning to the Uffizi, speaking of innovative accessibility and new attractiveness, then caution is needed and above all that an organization’s pricing strategy responds first and foremost to its engagement strategy (and one size of access generally does not fit all). Therefore, beyond the goodness or otherwise of the still-unfolding “Corridor” operation, whose actual fits and impactsare still unknown, one cannot and should not give in to the seduction of numbers, one way or the other: subsidized accesses with discounts or free admissions, or on the other hand, excessively expensive tickets, if applied without a real and coherent access strategy, which considers the personal “essential value” proper to the enjoyment of a culture experience, mark an impact point on that very perception, and in any case negative, generating modest returns, including economic ones, and damage on cultural consumption even in the long term (and with which we are already dealing today).

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