The pandemic gives Quebecers the opportunity to visit their museums more, as a strange collateral cultural advantage. This is what we can understand from the latest data from the Quebec Institute of Statistics on museum attendance in the third quarter. We see a 75% increase in summer attendance compared to 2020, which has allowed museums to recover more than half of their usual visitors.
What seems to be very great growth must be tempered, as the director general of the Société des musées du Québec (SMQ), Stéphane Chagnon, immediately points out. Because the first summer of the pandemic, in 2020, which serves as a reference year, was “catastrophic for museums. We had 2.2 million visitors, compared to 6.9 million [à l’été] 2019, before COVID-19”.
A wander to go
Mr. Chagnon is therefore very pleased with the 3.8 million visitors in the summer of 2021. “Museums are finding a way to go”, despite a large hole in the visitor pool. Because “the museum ecosystem is partly dependent on foreign tourists, recalls the director, partly on Quebec tourists who visit Quebec, and partly on school groups”.
In normal times, 70% of museum visitors are tourists, that is to say, they have traveled more than 40 kilometers from their residence. Since foreign tourists were still practically absent in 2021, “what saved the museum summer was Quebec tourism”.
Intra-Québec tourists accounted for 54% of visitors, compared to 20% for the same sunny period in 2019, according to the SMQ’s Survey of origin of museum visitors, which covers the period from 1er July to September 6, 2021. “The composition of tourist audiences [était] quite different in 2019, when international tourists, including the United States, represented 36% of visitors.
We are seeing a 28% increase in visitors to museums located in remote areas since 2019.
The twenty or so institutions in Bas-Saint-Laurent have seen, thanks to Quebecers on vacation, their attendance increase by 13% compared to 2019, according to the Institute of Statistics. The museums of the Côte-Nord and Nord-du-Québec experienced a 5% increase. Urban centers, however, suffered a backlash: the Mauricie, Montreal, Centre-du-Québec and Capitale-Nationale, in that order, noted lower attendance than in 2019. The absence of foreign tourists would explain this figure. .
A communicating vessels effect
“The hypothesis is that urban residents go out to the region for their holidays, and go to visit museums there, but that the reverse is not true. We think that residents of the regions come much less on vacation to Trois-Rivières, Quebec or Montreal,” suggests Stéphane Chagnon. And this second summer of pandemic holidays would have encouraged the discovery of remote regions: “We have observed a 28% increase in visitors to museums located in remote regions since 2019”, indicates the SMQ in its Survey.
It is an effect of communicating vessels: without possible travel, Quebecers go to museums here. To the point where the SMQ “anticipates a vacuum in the summer of 2023, if the pandemic subsides. Quebec tourists should then start traveling abroad again, and we think we will see a less good performance in the regions. And a better one in the museums of Montreal and Quebec, with the return of foreign tourists”.