M+ museum offers free entry to customers caught in design exhibition bottleneck

Hong Kong’s M+ museum has offered ticket holders one free entry in the next three months after poor crowd management led to hours-long queues for an exhibition that opened at the weekend, prompting a wave of customer complaints.

The venue’s “Design Ah! Experience the Wonder of Everyday Design” exhibition in West Kowloon Cultural District drew thousands of visitors on Sunday, who paid either HK$190 (US$24) for a standard price ticket or HK$400 for a combo admitting two adults and one child, among other options.

Disgruntled visitors took to the social media platform Threads to vent their dissatisfaction, with user kaneckk06 posting on Sunday evening that the queue still showed a 120-minute wait time at 4.15pm, even though the museum was scheduled to close in about two hours.

“Are you taking us for fools? Why is the visitor management so terrible at M+? No streaming of crowds, no alternatives, no rescheduling, no refund arrangements and no customer service. Are we supposed to only take a quick peep?” the user said.

Online media users also pointed out that there were more queues for certain exhibits within the show and insufficient time to cover all of it, despite opening hours being extended by half an hour to 6.30pm.

A museum spokeswoman said on Sunday night that the response to the exhibition was “overwhelming” and apologised for the inconvenience caused by the admission arrangements, pledging to review procedures and allocate additional staff.