As of 2011 the Institut de Cultura (Culture Institute of Barcelona) of Barcelona City Council has carried out a yearly survey on the visitors to the city’s museums in order to gain an insight into the profile of visitors to these facilities.
In 2014, eleven museums took part in the survey and the subsequent analysis of the data has provided us with a visitor profile that is very similar to that of previous years.
- Three of every four visitors to Barcelona’s museums are from abroad, mainly from European countries, whilst one in ten visitors is a resident in the city of Barcelona. The museums that receive most visitors, namely the Picasso Museum, Montjuïc Castle and the Miró Foundation, are also those with the largest proportion of foreign visitors. The only museums to receive mostly Catalan visitors are El Born Centre Cultural, the Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona (Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre – CCCB) and the Museu Blau science museum.
- Overall, among all the museums under analysis, there are more women visitors than men, although this is not the case for all facilities.
- Over 80% are visiting the museum for the first time, although among visitors who live in the Catalan capital and those who are visiting the CCCB, this percentage is just under 50%.
- A third of visitors are accompanied by their partner, whilst a quarter are accompanied by friends.
- Overall, visitors purchase 2.3 tickets, a figure that for the Museu Blau and El Born Centre Cultural is 3.0, or just under, as these facilities receive more family visitors, as is the case with the Museu de la Música (Music Museum).
- Given that most visitors are from abroad, tourist information points serve as the main promoters of the city’s museums. However, Catalan visitors most frequently quote the media, advertising, word of mouth and having visited the museum before as their source of information.
Document in Catalan