Luring tourists off beaten paths

OPEN ARMS: Education and Visitors-Services Manager Dalila Goulart says the John Brown House Museum has about 6,000 visitors per year. While there is an understanding of limited resources, she says more promotion for the 18th-century house and museum would be welcome. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
OPEN ARMS: Education and Visitors-Services Manager Dalila Goulart says the John Brown House Museum has about 6,000 visitors per year. While there is an understanding of limited resources, she says more promotion for the 18th-century house and museum would be welcome. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

For nonprofit museums and historical sites off the beaten path or public radar, there’s never enough publicity, promotion or cross-organizational cooperation to get the word out.
It’s an annual issue many of Rhode Island’s somewhat lesser-known museums – read: not Newport mansions – are dealing with as they prepare for their busiest season this summer.
“We certainly do attract people … but [we] alone aren’t going to be a tourist destination,” said Janice O’Donnell, executive director of the Providence Children’s Museum. “I think it would be really helpful for visitors to Rhode Island to see the state as a whole package. We’ve been talking about it for decades.”
The Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau has for several months been holding meetings with the heads of some of the state’s historical homes and museums in order to develop linkages and thematic itineraries amongst the attractions, according to President and CEO Martha Sheridan.
The goal, Sheridan said, is to offer Providence and Rhode Island visitors the complete experience they often say they are looking for when traveling to the Ocean State.
“They don’t want a one-off thing,” Sheridan said. “Our goal is to find out what the commonalities are, to work collaboratively, and to develop itineraries and tours.”
Sheridan said the meetings were born out of the necessity to pool resources of attractions that by their nature are small and do not have the wherewithal – financial or in personnel – to draw visitors the way larger entities can. The goal is to offer a thematic tour linking local sites this summer.
The lesser-known historical sites and museums throughout the state do draw visitors, and their combined economic contribution is significant, though still difficult to quantify.
According to the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the seven museums that received grants from that organization had $8.7 million in ticket sales for fiscal 2012 and had 186,103 visitors.
Those numbers do not include indirect spending from visitors who may have spent money at nearby restaurants, shops and parking garages, among other businesses.
Receiving grants were the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, considered one of the state’s more popular museum draws, as well as the Old Slater Mill, Warwick Art Museum, Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island Museum of Science and Art, Providence’s Museum of Natural History & Planetarium and the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum. “Each museum adds a spark to the cultural vitality of Rhode Island, which helps make this a great place to visit and live,” said Randall Rosenbaum, executive director of the R.I. State Council on the Arts. “Rhode Island has an amazing wealth of cultural treasures for a state its size.”
The Governor Henry Lippitt House Museum on Hope Street in Providence takes in, according to house administrator Dave Wrenn, fewer than 5,000 visitors per year and sees its busiest months during the May through October guided-tour program.
Wrenn said the house, built in 1865 for Henry Lippitt, a textile merchant, and his family, is the state’s only Victorian-era museum open to the public. Much work is being done, Wren said, to get the house in “tip top” shape for its 150th anniversary in 2015.
Because of its small size, the museum is able to schedule private tours, and the house is available for rent for special occasions and corporate events.
“[The house] is really built for fine entertaining, and it remains a viable place for that,” Wrenn said. “It gives us a balance between impact on the museum and exposing people to this incredible, historic site. It does help us achieve our mission, because we are getting folks into the house who normally wouldn’t see it. People are truly engaged by the house.”
Morgan Grefe, executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Society, which oversees the John Brown House Museum on Power Street in Providence, has been taking part in the meetings with the Providence Warwick CVB.
Dalila Goulart, education and visitors-services manager for the museum, said while it would be great to have more marketing resources from the state level, there is an understanding of limited resources.
Goulart said the John Brown House Museum, an 18th-century house and museum, has about 6,000 visitors per year, which includes those who do not take a full tour. Last year, there were 1,374 people who visited from June through September. Goulart said there were 513 visitors in October, which remains a strong month for the museum with school field trips and conferences. “I don’t feel unsupported [in promotion] but certainly it would be great to have more,” Goulart said. “I feel it’s something that state tourism is working on.”
New this season at the John Brown House is an audio tour, which the museum debuted last September in a limited capacity.
“It’s a huge benefit to us, and we can play into visitors’ conveniences; it’s up to them how to experience the museum,” Goulart said.
The Providence Children’s Museum, O’Donnell said, had 161,185 visitors in 2012, with February being its busiest month.
O’Donnell would like more exposure to out-of-state visitors who are taking a summer vacation in Newport or South County.
“They don’t have any idea how close Providence is,” she said.
The Newport Art Museum, which Executive Director Lisa Goddard said is a destination for cultural travelers, sees a 60 percent nonlocal attendance during summer months. She sees a reversal during the winter, with 60 percent of attendees being local residents.
There were almost 15,000 visitors to the museum last year. Attendance at educational classes and programs pushes that figure to almost 20,000.
The museum belongs to Newport’s Old Quarter, a collaborative group that purchases advertising together and works on cross-promotion.
“We wouldn’t separately be able to purchase advertising in national publications,” Goddard said. “We would love to have more visibility with the state and local departments of economic development, the hospitality industry. We are being represented [but] I of course think there’s never enough.”
Sheridan said the thematic tours will be available through the CVB’s website as a suggested itinerary and dispersed at the visitors center in the same way.
An ideal situation, she said, would be to develop an audio tour and a mobile site that highlights features along the tour.
“The goal [too] is to be able to tie into the RISD Museum, which is a larger attraction for us,” Sheridan said. “We [hopefully] will be able to tie into their major exhibitions, if applicable, to latch onto that very robust site and their marketing efforts.” •

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