The Museum Council, Icelanders' Association and the Association of Icelandic Local Authorities are hosting a symposium on museums and tourism on Friday, November 18th from 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM in the Museum Building on Hverfisgata.
The symposium is held following (PDF file)report of the Icelandic Museum Council on museums and tourism, which was published in the fall of 2015 and was prepared by the Research Center for Museum Studies at the University of Iceland and the Institute of Economics at the University of Iceland.
The main findings of the study were that there is a significant lack of public policy specifically considering museums and museum-related activities as important participants in tourism. The results of the Economic Institute indicated that the scope of the museum sector has increased in recent years, for example, the number of museum visitors has increased by 90% since 1996. State contributions to so-called tourist museums are over a billion ISK per year but have been declining in real terms in recent years. Four opinion surveys conducted among cultural representatives, marketing agencies, tourism service providers, museums and museum-related activities show that while museums are considered an important part of tourism, the role and position of museums within the sector appears weak. Although significant work has been done in recent years on tourism and museum issues, there is a lack of a foundation and a holistic overview of the parties involved in the integration of both sectors.
The Museum Council has been working on preparing the symposium for some time, but its purpose is to bring together some of the stakeholders involved in policy-making in these areas, for example as museum owners or public policy-makers.
Speakers come from the Icelandic Centre for Tourism, the Association of Icelandic Local Authorities, university research centres and regional marketing agencies, to name a few.
The symposium is supported by the National Museum of Iceland.
Further information will be published later on this website.