A critical evaluation of visitor experience in two Maltese historic house museums

Abstract

Historic House Museums are institutions poised to retain their connections to the past whilst protecting and displaying their collections, engaging diverse audiences, and educating visitors. Over the past half-century, traditional concepts of how visitors experience museums have been challenged by a number of innovative and alternative approaches, and as a result museums are placing an increasing emphasis on optimising the visitor experience. However, the way visitors in Malta perceive Historic House Museums on a holistic level has received relatively little research attention. Inspired by the work of Cassar (2015), the author sought to address this gap, and this dissertation critically evaluates visitor experience in Historic House Museums at two selected Maltese case studies, namely Palazzo Falson (Mdina) and the Inquisitor’s Palace (Birgu), focusing on visitors’ perception and understanding. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 150 visitors for each case study. All the respondents were unobtrusively tracked prior to completing the survey, allowing analysis of the relationship between visitors’ characteristics, perceptions, and behaviours. In addition, interviews with two museums’ professionals provided a better understanding of the current management strategies and attitudes. The study allowed the researcher to trace visitors’ profiles, mode of attendance, motivations, expectations, and outcomes, as well as visitor behaviours and circulation patterns at both sites. Furthermore, this also made it possible to analyse the interconnections between them. The results revealed that the visitors’ level of engagement varied between the various contents and layouts, mostly because of their personal attributes as well as the museums’ characteristics. The findings of this study can provide the museum managers with operational indications to make possible improvements to the visit itinerary, the internal signage, and the interpretive equipment, and to create appealing and meaningful experiences to their visitors.