7.2 Today’s Visitor Attractions
Meagan A. McGuire
This chapter describes a few of the most popular types of visitor attractions, each of which provide a variety of career opportunities.
Museums
Museums focus on preserving and exhibiting significant natural or human-made places, animals, or objects. By using those exhibits or stories to educate the visiting public, they function as heritage sites. Seventy-six percent of all U.S. leisure travelers participate in heritage activities when visiting a destination (American Alliance of Museums [AAM], 2022).
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) defines a museum as “a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage” (as cited in Adams, 2022, para. 4).
Below are some examples of different types of museums (Lee, 2024):
- Open-Air Archaeological Sites: places that are open for visitation, such as the Tusayan Ruins located inside Grand Canyon National Park pictured below
- Art Museums: galleries that display art objects such as paintings, photography, and sculpture
- Historic Homes: structures of historic significance that are preserved and usually restored to replicate a particular time period
- History Museums: facilities that house a collection of historically significant objects
- Living History Museums: places where actors perform historical events or perform tasks typical to a time period
- Natural History Museums: facilities housing preserved bones or bodies of animals and plants
- Science Museums: centers that display scientific objects, showcase scientific ideas, and are usually interactive
- Zoos and Aquariums: establishments that maintain a collection of living animals
“A not-for-profit” entity whose purpose is “in service to society” means that the organization’s primary mission is to serve the public rather than to earn money. Although the term “museum” may be used by the general public or in marketing materials by enterprises that are for-profit, these businesses are not focused on conservation, research, or education and cannot be considered true museums. Ripley’s Believe it or Not, for example, encourages people to “visit any one of Ripley’s 29 museums around the world to marvel at hundreds of unusual artifacts and get hands on with amazing interactives” (Ripley’s, 2019, para. 1). Although Ripley’s does exhibit historic or unusual natural and human-made artifacts, it is not primarily in the business of using these artifacts as tools to educate the public. Because Ripley’s primary motivation is to earn money through admission sales, it does not operate in service to society and falls under the category of an entertainment business.
Fact
At the Met Gala in 2022, Kim Kardashian famously wore the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore in 1962 when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy. This caused an uproar among archivists and historians who felt that the dress was of suc