Museum visitor numbers healthy despite challenges
DESPITE some top attractions being closed for several months, the Otago Museum is likely to attract at least 340,000 visitors this financial year, director Dr Ian Griffin says.
Projected attendance had earlier been running about 20,000 behind the 353,439 who visited the museum in the previous financial year.
But this was being strongly offset by the ‘‘overwhelmingly very positive’’ public response to the redeveloped Tuhura Otago Community Trust Science Centre and its new, imported interactives, and the Perpetual Guardian Planetarium.
‘‘We’re very pleased with that,’’ Dr Griffin said.
The popularity of the centre and planetarium had continued to ‘‘exceed expectations’’ since the redeveloped centre reopened in December, Dr Griffin said.
Given this offsetting popularity, overall museum attendance for the financial year was making up ground and likely to reach about 340,000, or could even match last year’s figures by the end of next month.
The overall ‘‘falloff in visitation’’ was likely to have resulted from a combination of the ‘‘increasing difficulty of parking’’ near the museum, combined with ‘‘excellent summer weather which has continued well into autumn’’.
On fine days, many people preferred to make use of the good weather and go to a beach, rather than visit the museum, he said.
The significant reduction in the number of parking spaces near the museum during the construction and roll out of the nearby new State Highway 1 cycleway was of ‘‘growing con cern’’, Dr Griffin said in a recent report.
This had generated complaints from visitors about ‘‘lack of parking availability’’.
‘‘We welcome the enhanced safety for cyclists that the new cycleway brings, but it remains disappointing that a solution to ongoing parking issues around the museum’’ had ‘‘yet to be addressed’’ by the Dunedin City Council and New Zealand Transport Agency, he said.
Over February and March, the Tuhura centre attracted more than 11,500 visitors, averaging 195 visitors a day — up 58% on the corresponding period last year for the former Discovery World Tropical Forest.
The planetarium had attracted 3673 visitors over February-March, up 87% on the corresponding period last year, and the Amazing Universe, We Are Stars and Flying Monsters shows all attracted good numbers.
And more than 3000 people had flocked to the museum on a single day, understood to be Saturday, March 31, during a series of Ed Sheeran concerts in the city, including that night, museum organisers said.