6.6C Vatican Museums - Anastasia Biller, Head of the Office of Public Relations and Services

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Del curso dictado por Università Bocconi

Arts and Heritage Management

273 calificaciones

Università Bocconi

Arts and Heritage Management

273 calificaciones

Today cultural institutions are facing important dilemmas in many aspects of their management. Over the past decades, a new figure has emerged that of the art manager. Imagine you went to work every day to connect artists with audiences, vision with reality, and money with a mission. That is what managers in the arts do, they play an essential role in transforming the minds, lives, and communities through creative expression. This course has been conceptualized to address the need of skills and techniques to help professionals and managers in running art and cultural institutions. Learning Objectives There are three objectives to this course. First, we will approach the biggest issue cultural institutions face, the coexistence of managers and curators and giving evidence as to when, how, and why they can get along. Second, we will focus on some contemporary facets on what is means to manage a cultural institution and what cultural managers should expect and be able to face. And lastly, we will provide models and tools to design and implement appropriate courses of action to satisfy customers (visitors and audiences) and build an advantage over the competition. Course Structure The course is divided into six sections. Five sections are dedicated to specific aspects and themes of managing cultural institutions, while the sixth section is dedicated to individual interviews of prominent cultural institution managers on specific topics. The involvement of professionals and managers gives an incredible value to the learning experience of this course. Each module is paired with a quiz and discussion forums to reflect on the variety of the heritage management, its complexity, and the power of the network that we will build together during the course. Successful completion of the quizzes is required for a course certificate as explained in the Grading Policy page. If you love art and want to make an impact in this unique and fantastic sector, this course will support you in understanding the peculiarities of this sector and how to leverage on its tools to make a bigger impact. Look forward to meeting you online! Acknowledgements: Vatican Museums: www.museivaticani.va Cenacolo Vinciano: www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/Contenuti/MibacUnif/Eventi/visualizza_asset.html_1283837989.html (ITA) FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano): eng.fondoambiente.it MUVE (Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia): www.visitmuve.it The National Trust: www.nationaltrust.org.uk The Archeological Site of Paestum: www.museopaestum.beniculturali.it whc.unesco.org/en/list/842 Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Florence): www.museumflorence.com Museo del Violino: www.museodelviolino.org _________________________________ Disclaimer - Since some of the videos are conducted with those whose native language is not English, we have decided to sometimes preserve their more emphatic speech to keep a tighter match between the audio and subtitles.

De la lección

MEET THE MANAGERS

Hear what managers have to share about how they deal with the main topics of this field: A collection of best practices told directly from the people responsible for these success cases.

6.1 Meet the managers0:51

6.2 Reliving the Past in the Present | Archeological Site of Paestum - Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director14:36

6.3 An Example of Virtuosity | Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia - Mattia Agnetti, General Secretary7:18

6.4A FAI Contemporary Art and Collection | Villa Litta Panza - Anna Bernardini, Director3:56

6.4B FAI Fundraising and International Networks | Villa Necchi Campiglio - Alessandra Varisco, International Fundraising Manager11:26

6.4C FAI Fundraising and CRM - Patrice Simonnet, Head of Individual Fundraising7:50

6.5 Research and Promotion as Key Vector for Success | Cenacolo Vinciano - Chiara Rostagno, Director13:18

6.6 - Vatican Museums - Barbara Jatta, Director12:44

6.6A Vatican Museums - Antonio Paolucci, Former Director8:53

6.6B Vatican Museums - Rosangela Mancusi, Head of Multimedia and Web Office10:49

6.6C Vatican Museums - Anastasia Biller, Head of the Office of Public Relations and Services13:41

6.6D Vatican Museums - Luca della Giovampaola, Head of Technology Support9:38

6.6E Vatican Museums - Diego Ortuso, Head of Museum Security Staff7:50

6.7 Museo dell' Opera del Duomo (Florence) - Fr. Timothy Verdon, Director4:56

6.8 National Trust - Simon Murray, Senior Director3:47

Conoce a los instructores

Andrea Rurale
Director
Master in Arts Management and Administration (MAMA)

Anastasia Biller's one of the heads of Public Relations and

Services here at the Vatican Museum, thank you.

You're welcome.

Well, your role is managing the content interaction with the customers,

between twenty-five and thirty thousand visitors per day, six million visitors per

year and you deal with ticketing flows.

Can you describe, first of all, the role of your office and

then, what is the challenge of being in that role in a particular context

like this, with such a massive flow of visitors?

Yes, of course.

Well I'm the Head of the Back Office of the Public Relations Service Department.

Obviously, up until 2008 the online ticket system did not exist.

In 2008 the Public Relations Service Office was created and

that brought about a reorganization of all offices dealing with services

that are available for the public.

Therefore, all different areas were brought together,

which now create the Public Relations Office.

The back office obviously is made up of departments that deal with guided tours,

an area that deals with the online ticket system.

Another area which deals with private tours,

which are available after closing time.

And then obviously an area, since we are the Vatican Museums,

an area that deals with the guests of the Secretariat of State and

of the management of the Vatican Museums.

As I mentioned before, up until 2008, tickets could not be bought online.

If you wanted a ticket, you had to buy them at the entrance to the museums.

Thanks to the online ticket system, tickets could be finally bought online.

Obviously there are still those that prefer to queue up outside, but

if we are talking about 25,000 people a day,

they probably make up 20% of visitors that visit us every day.

So perhaps we have the Koreans,

the Korean tourists, that prefer to book via tour operators.

Obviously they are traveling to Europe,

the tour operator obviously is managing their tour throughout Europe and

therefore they decide perhaps to save on the 4 Euros to skip the line outside.

So they're still waiting in the queue.

But obviously the ticket office has evolved obviously over the last years.

So there's a number of different services that can be bought online so

as to meet the demands of the growing tourism industry via internet.

So if beforehand you could only book an admission ticket online,

now obviously you can book guided tours and other services.

You can combine an admission ticket with a breakfast, a lunch, a happy hour or

even an audio guide.

23% of the individuals that booked online last year decided

to add an audio guide to their admission ticket.

Just to let you understand, in 2008 when the online ticket system was developed,

in the autumn of that year 8,000 tickets were bought online by individuals.

That grew to 270,000 in 2009.

Last year 1.8 million visitors decided to book an admission ticket via the internet.

So obviously the fact of being able to book a ticket, choose the day and

the time, has obviously brought about an increase in the number of visitors

to the Vatican Museums.

Another point I would like to mention, is that tour operators up until 2008,

if they wanted to book tickets, they needed to send a fax.

And then queue up on the day of the visit to collect their tickets.

Along with development of the online ticket system,

tour operators could open a deposit account with the Vatican Museums,

which means that they were managing their own bookings by themselves.

So tour operators can book two months in advance.

This means that they can move a higher volume of visitors.

The over 300 tour operators which have a deposit account inside

the Vatican Museums, they booked over 2.8 million tickets last year for

their visitors.

So the tour operator has a sort of account inside the Vatican Museums and

they buy and purchase the single ticket, the group ticket based on this account.

That's right.

They can buy tickets, but

obviously they can also buy the other services which we offer.

The online ticket system enables the Vatican Museums to monitor and

manage all admission tickets bought by tour operators, groups, pilgrimages,

schools, universities, individuals because they all have a dedicated time slot, okay?

Obviously the creation of the online ticket system and

the reorganization of our office

means as well that our staff can focus on the daily challenges.

As you can imagine,

25,000 people per day is a lot to make sure is running correctly.

So I can probably say that thanks to the online ticket office and

our consequent reorganization, I can probably say that the public

perception and the visitor experience has changed for the best.

Regarding what you mentioned before about the fact that you are able

to monitor the amount of tickets and

the category of the visit of the ticket buyer online,

You mentioned the example of one ticketer, for example the Koreans, so

the fact that they typically, looking at the data collected, they don't buy online.

And they prefer that to be queue and got the ticket.

But in order to make this reading of the data effective, so

you have this information and do you implement some tools in order to change

the behavior of the visitors or not?

Of course, of course, beforehand services such as breakfast, lunches and

happy hours which can be bought online, beforehand they did not exist.

It was thanks to our collaboration with tour operators that we realized

the necessity to offer services that the general public actually wants.

And therefore and now online, visitors can combine their ticket to a breakfast,

a lunch, or even a happy hour.

And these services are growing, continuing to grow in time.

The number of visitors that take part in these tours every year is

continuing to increase.

The last point I would like to talk with you is regarding the flow.

So, 25,000, we have of course a moment inside the day that there

are part of this 6 kilometer itinerary that is more crowded than the other,

talking about the Sistine Chapel, the corridors, and so on.

So do you implement some technique in terms of preventing the visitor to enter,

diversify the entrance or stop for a while this never ending flow of visitors?

Of course, because of the online system

we can manage the time-slots however we wish to.

Obviously, the Vatican Museums, as you mentioned,

are one of the most visited museums in the world.

We registered last year over 6 million visitors.

That ranks the Vatican Museums as the fourth most visited museum in the world

after the Louvre in Paris, after the British Museum, and

after the Metropolitan in New York.

The Vatican Museums differ in key aspects from other leading institutions.

And as you mentioned, Vatican Museums were not custom built.

They are accommodating what was originally a papal residence.

Therefore this causes logistic challenges, which we need to face considering

the huge numbers of visitors that are continuing to visit us every year.

Another ideological aspect of the Museums of the Pope is that

nobody should be turned away.

This obviously does not help the congestion inside the Museums.

That is why the ticket office is fundamental.

It means we can program the visits during the month, during the day.

We know just to take an example,

in the month of October we have large groups of Pilgrims from Germany.

That means that we can program for that period a certain amount of guided tours

to cater for the German Pilgrims that will be visiting, okay?

Obviously as I mentioned before, as you mentioned,

there are logistical problems to do with the layout of the museums.

To deal with this we therefore created a series of different itineraries,

which direct visitors to lesser well-known areas of the museum, so

as to take the pressure off the main route, which leads to the Sistine Chapel.

We have over, let's say 25 different types of tours to cater for this problem.

Another initiative, which was inaugurated a few years ago, were the Friday night

evening openings during the summer period which lasts from May to October.

This obviously allows visitors to visit during the evening at their ease,

but also means that the bookings are spread out during the day.

Obviously to be able to manage such a huge number of visitors,

if we are talking about 25,000,

30,000 during the peak season, the Office for Public Relations needs to work

on a daily basis alongside the Security Department of the Vatican Museums.

I can say, the successful management of these museums is due to the fact that

the main areas of the museums are working together to deliver on the main aims

of the institution with the objective of high quality standards.

Regarding setting a pricing policy,

all the prices of course are communicated online and

also online, it's possible to book special visits for

particular category of visitors.

Can you talk about that?

Yes, of course.

One needs to remember that the Vatican Museums

are an entity within the Vatican itself.

And therefore, they have an unusual governance structure,

being answerable to the Governorate of the Vatican itself.

Therefore all decisions, even the decisions regarding the costs of different

services offered by the Vatican Museums,

have to be authorized by the Governatorate.

As I mentioned before,

the Vatican Museums have a wide range of experiences, all varying in costs.

To be able to manage such a huge number of visitors everyday,

the Vatican Museums need to understand the motivations and

needs behind the visitors wanting to visit the Vatican Museums, whilst considering

as well the financial capacities of each visitor wishing to visit.

This is the fourth consecutive year the Vatican Museums has decided not

to increase the cost of the admission ticket.

As I said before,

visitors are able to decide between a wide range of different experiences.

Schools, universities,

pilgrimages, they all have the right to a reduced price ticket.

Obviously visitors who are wanting to experience something a little bit

more exclusive can book a tour after the closing time.

Obviously here the costs are not the same,

they are a little bit more exclusive obviously.

To a private tour you can add a dinner or even aperitif if you wish,

to make something a little bit more exclusive.

So you can imagine having

a dinner in such an area is absolutely a once in a lifetime experience.

Another tour which was made available last year,

that now you can book online, was achieved thanks to the extraordinary

activation of the Vatican Castel Gandolfo Railway.

Which enables visitors to leave by train from inside the Vatican,

which leads them right up to the Pontifical Villa of Castel Gandolfo.

To enable families to take part in this tour, the Vatican Museums decided

to create a family ticket, which means that families with two or

more children would have the right to free tickets.

To be able to study our ticketing policy and

to compare what other institutions are doing,

the Vatican Museums participate at different international travel markets.

Thanks to our participation at the World Travel Market in London a few years ago

and the opportunity to meet experts in disabled accessible tourism,

the Vatican Museums realized the necessity to offer services for the disabled.

The Vatican Museums now have a series of tours, all free of charge,

for the disabled.

So we have tours in sign language for the deaf.

We have tactile tours for the blind.

The participation at such fairs enables us to come into contact with the tour

operators and to study the different markets and

therefore develop new services which will then of coursel be available online.

Anastasia Biller, one of the Heads of Public Relations and Services,

thank you very much.

You're welcome.

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