Terror hits museum visits

By AMIE RICHARDSON and CATHY ARONSON

The Auckland Museum has suffered a dramatic decline in visitors, which it blames partly on the September 11 terrorist attacks.

But rivals Te Papa and the Waikato Museum have survived the impact of international terrorism with no drop in patronage.

During November the number of visitors to the Auckland Museum fell by 22 per cent, from 42,209 in November 2000 to 32,941.

In December, numbers were down 9 per cent. In January the decline was 12 per cent compared with January last year and 20 per cent lower than budgeted.

The number of children who visited the museum in January was 23 per cent below budget predictions, a drop which the museum attributed to the Vodafone Body Art exhibition being rated for a mature audience.

Attendance at Te Papa during October, November and December was up on the previous year. In November the museum had 114,000 visitors - the largest November attendance since it opened four years ago.

Auckland Museum's head of sales and marketing, Sally Carwardine, said the annual budget was set well before the September 11 terrorist attacks and the collapse of Ansett Australia.

Miss Carwardine said Japan and the United States were a big market for the museum.

Information from Tourism Auckland showed that the number of Japanese tourists visiting New Zealand was down 50 per cent last November compared with November 2000, and American visitors were down by 11 per cent.

But December's overall visitor numbers for Auckland were up 0.1 per cent on 2000.

Miss Carwardine said the local market had kept the museum afloat.

In January, 69 per cent of visitors were from New Zealand.

Tourism Auckland chief Graeme Osborne said it was important for Auckland Museum to attract new visitors through innovative programmes and exhibitions.

He said businesses needed to refocus their promotion campaigns to appeal to the domestic market and Australia.

"It's a highly competitive market, not just internationally but domestically. Development programmes are vital to the survival of the museum."

Tourism Auckland and the museum would begin a domestic campaign aimed at attracting visitors from Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The number of visitors to the National Maritime Museum in Auckland dropped by almost 11,000 for the 12 months to June last year, compared with 2000.

Marketer Pam Smith said the numbers for 2000 were higher because of the America's Cup.

She said the museum did not attribute the loss of visitors solely to the September 11 attacks.

Visitor numbers at the Waikato Museum of Art and History were down from 101,000 to 80,000 for its 2000-2001 financial year.

Museum manager Geoff Williams said the drop was in the first half of last year when the museum was preparing for a large exhibition at the end of the year.

"Any drop concerns us but it was temporary and didn't seem to signal any kind of trend. The museum is quite stable."