Pandemic opens a new niche for museums: private virtual tours and group virtual visits they can charge money for
- US$100 for a two-hour virtual tour of Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion with 299 others, or US$300 a head for up to 40 art fans to tour the Metropolitan Museum
- Virtual tours are a way for museums to show their collections and bring in some money, and could outlast the coronavirus pandemic, experts say
Take a guided tour of Elvis Presley’s home from your sofa or marvel at old masters’ paintings in The Met without visiting New York: museums, forced to adapt by the pandemic, are now offering paid virtual tours – but how big a source of income will they become?
Interactive walks, video games and podcasts are some of the free innovations museums have launched to try to mitigate the effects of closures and a slump in visitors caused by coronavirus. But more and more institutions are now pushing paid options.
Presley’s home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, has been offering two-hour-long tours by guide Angie Marchese for US$100 a head since January.
Some 300 people, the maximum capacity, signed up for each of the first two virtual tours, in which they hear anecdotes about Presley, see objects he owned, and can ask questions about his life.
In December, Barbara Brown-Abolafia took her students from Bergen Community College in the US state of New Jersey on a virtual trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the exhibition “A New Look at Old Masters”.