The show was the normal balancing act of trying to squeeze in visits to Orlando attractions to see what’s new, attend parts of the conference, meet with current and prospective clients and get the most from all the wonderful networking opportunities.

Museums Day on the Monday included some interesting talks with speakers drawn from all sectors of the industry, proving how much we can all learn from each other.

The first session explored how museums manage their brands. Melissa Felder of the California Academy of Science discussed the importance of delivering on its brand promise. The museum has defined its brand personality as hip, intellectual, modern and accessible. Research indicates they’re delivering on the first three but still have to work on accessibility.

The importance of the latter is shown by visitor research which indicates that satisfaction increases by five per cent when a visit includes some interaction with scientists/museum specialists. Rob Gallas of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) reported on the need to get buy-in from staff to ensure the experience aligns with the brand. MOSI has brought together a cross-discipline team of brand champions on a Brand Council, which meets bi-monthly and is charged with ensuring that the museum keeps to its brand promise.

The second session explored what museums and science centres can learn from urban renewal. Museums expert Mac West reviewed cases where museums had been re-located to act as anchors for urban re-development projects. The benefit for the museum in each case was a new and improved building, often in a central location and often enabling the museum to re-locate alongside other museums and institutions, to create a cultural destination.

Examples given included The Exploratorium in San Francisco which moved to the waterfront as part of the re-development of Piers 15 and 17, the Museum of Nature and Science which moved to the Dallas Art District, and Peoria, Illinois where a number of museums were relocated to create a new Museums Square in an area which had started to decay.

These and other sessions touched on some of the key issues for visitor attractions today, including:

- Aligning your brand experience to your brand promise – stressing how important it is to deliver brand promises throughout the visitor experience and understanding that brand delivery needs to go far beyond just marketing and communication.

- Recognising the power of experiences – in the 80s attractions started to recruit from FMCG to bring marketing skills into the industry, now the retail and FMCG sectors are starting to recruit from the attractions industry

- It’s all about me – the technical ability to make sense of customer profile and usage data is helping attractions to deliver on the desire of visitors to tailor their experiences at attractions, and influence the experience itself.