Happy Tourism Day!


Yesterday was tourism day. This year more than any other, tourist venues need this sort of promotion. In a year which has seen the tourism industry hit hard by the pandemic, people's holidays cancelled, quarantine, restrictions and limitations, social media promotional activity is certainly welcomed.

Today, the Museum staff started to wear facemasks whilst behind the reception counter. Previously, we had only worn masks when in the main museum gallery, cleaning toilets or elsewhere in public areas of the building. 

But from today we were expected to wear a facemask behind the safety of our sneeze screen. Learning to communicate wearing a covering over your mouth has proved interesting. Visitors coming into the Museum have to cope with excessive background noise from other visitors and our six television screens, plus many visitors (rightly so) tend to stand back from the reception desk, for social distancing. So this makes letting visitors know how we are operating and what they need to do difficult, when wearing a face covering and competing with other noise.

We now have a list of bullet points stuck to the front of the sneeze screen. We point at this list as we talk to visitors (plus it has proved handy when we have had visitors with English as a second language) to help them if it is difficult to hear or even understand us. For me, someone who likes to chat to visitors, I have found this quite challenging as I attempt to make myself understood and therefore raise my voice to attempt to get myself heard. I also start to feel really hot as I chat to more and more visitors. It will take a little while for us to get used to wearing the masks and adapt our meet and greet for visitors.

We are also displaying the NHS QR code, another change in how we operate, as we encourage visitors to check-in at the Museum. So for tourism day, we appreciate all support as many Museums have not yet reopened, or only operating a limited opening, or have restrictions and limitations in place. As we head towards October, this will be our third month open to the public. Visitors who have managed to get out and about and visited the Museum, have been positive and supportive, complimentary and kind. As we head towards the winter season this is very much appreciated. Happy Tourism Day!

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