{"id":2451,"date":"2015-11-22T14:53:32","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T19:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/the-guggenheim-museum-tracking-visitor-movements-to-deliver-a-better-museum-experience\/"},"modified":"2015-11-22T14:58:08","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T19:58:08","slug":"the-guggenheim-museum-tracking-visitor-movements-to-deliver-a-better-museum-experience","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/the-guggenheim-museum-tracking-visitor-movements-to-deliver-a-better-museum-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guggenheim Museum: Tracking Visitor Movements to Deliver a Better Museum Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last summer I visited the New York Botanical Garden and had a very different experience than any of my previous visits to cultural institutions. After downloading the Botanical Garden\u2019s free mobile app, my friends and I were able to scan barcodes throughout the exhibitions and get instant access to a wealth of information on all the plants and flowers we were viewing. This information was extremely valuable to us as visitors, but it was perhaps even more valuable to the museum. The New York Botanical Garden is one of many cultural institutions around the world that are increasing their use of technology to collect customer data and deliver a better experience for visitors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston are among the many cultural institutions that have launched mobile apps for visitors to get access to more information about current and upcoming exhibits.\u00a0 <\/span>The Dallas Museum of Art created a loyalty program based on the American Airlines frequent flier program that uses points to encourage visitors to return to their museum regularly. While many of these museums have introduced creative strategies to capture data on customer behaviors and tastes, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York has emerged as a leader in this area through its use of beacon technology.<\/p>\n

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Moving one step beyond launching a snazzy mobile app, the Guggenheim has set up a series of beacons in the museum\u2019s main rotunda to track the movements of its visitors. (The Guggenheim app is actually really snazzy, download it for free here<\/a>). Beacon technology has been used in the retail space, where insights on customer movements can help store owners send timely and targeted push notifications about coupons, new products, or other promotional features. Similarly, the Guggenheim is able to use insights gained from these beacons to discover how quickly visitors move through an exhibit and what works they spend the most time looking at. Using this data, the Guggenheim Museum can create value by:<\/p>\n