2021.01.12
As an important carrier for the inheritance of human civilization, from the opening of the world’s first comprehensive museum – the British Museum in the 17th century to widespread emergence of modern public museums, museums are playing an increasingly crucial role in terms of historical tracing, educational inheritance, cultural dissemination, scientific research, art appreciation, etc. In the context of the integration of cultural and tourism in the new era, museums are playing an increasingly prominent role as the cultural hub and constantly strengthening its positioning as important tourism resources. It has gradually become an important platform and carrier for demonstrating soft power and cultural confidence of the state, as well as the forerunner and practitioner of shaping tourism with culture.
The world’s first World Tourism Museum themed on “Tourism” is under intense construction in Xianghu, Hangzhou, which is expected to be completed and open in 2021. As a new outcome from the integration of culture and tourism and an integral part of WTA head office, the World Tourism Museum has attracted wide attention from all walks of life in culture and tourism circles since its inception. The author shares some thoughts on the function, positioning and exhibition hall design of the World Tourism Museum centering on three main purposes of the museums, namely, “education, research and appreciation”, proposed in the Regulation on Museums (2015) released by the State Council and the ICOM Statutes (2007) by International Council of Museums (ICOM) in the context of cultural and tourism integration in the new era.
First, giving prominence to the educational function of the World Tourism Museum. As a pioneering museum in global tourism, the World Tourism Museum has the natural attribute of tourism education and bears the responsibility and obligation of tourism education. The permanent exhibition halls of the World Tourism Museum, including the Tourism Complex Hall, World Tourism Hall and China Tourism Hall, should lay emphasis on comprehensively displaying the history of world tourism and the development course of tourism, demonstrating the contribution of tourism development to human civilization, the society and economy, and developing into a highland for cultivation of youth tourism knowledge and inheritance of tourism history, as well as a dissemination center of tourism culture and a science popularization center that showcase tourism civilization. Moreover, as people’s awareness of tourism continues to increase, the education of museums should, on the basis of popularization, move to the forefront, guide the thinking of the society on tourism, and trigger public discussions on tourism and the community of a shared future for mankind, cultural values, tourism safety, environmental ecology and other topics.
Second, giving play to the research role of the World Tourism Museum. Scientific research can provide guarantee for a museum to maintain professional vitality and status. The level of academic research capabilities also directly affects the competitiveness and vitality of a museum. The World Tourism Museum should develop into a collection center of world tourism materials, a research center that forecasts the frontier industry trends, and a data center that connects to the global tourism network, and actively explore and interpret the past, present and future of tourism. At the same time, we should attach great importance to the attraction and gathering of tourism research talents by museums, and increase their attraction to talents, so as to gradually form professional think tanks. In addition, given that the World Tourism Museum is an integral part of the headquarters of WTA and sets the WTA Member Hall as a permanent exhibition hall, we should make full use of the platform established by the international organization WTA, make academic contributions to and exert academic value in the field of researches on tourism discipline, tourism industry, tourism education, and tourism cultural relics in combination with the industry research reports released by WTA in recent years, including the Report on World Tourism Development, WTA Best Practice in Poverty Alleviation Through Tourism and the Report on the Prosperity of China’s Tourism Market.
Third, paying attention to the exhibition innovation of the World Tourism Museum. The tourism-themed museums should not be limited to the main exhibition mode of traditional museums dominated by “objects” and the collection concept with the object as the absolute center. For new museums with tourism as the theme, more focus should be put on building a cultural experience space that transcends physical limits. Nowadays, the technological revolution characterized by digitization, the Internet, the Internet of Things and AI is further breaking the boundaries of traditional industries, and constantly going beyond the boundaries of human production, life and way of thinking. For contemporary museums, the single display mode of pure cultural relics and pure texts is far from meeting the needs of visitors. With rapid development of electricity, light, sound and film technologies, and the emergence of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, museums have ushered in a wave of technological revolution of digital exhibitions, capable of meeting the visitors’ needs for multi-dimensional appreciation experience. In terms of exhibition, the technological advantages can contribute to the renewal and iteration of the exhibition modes of museums, eliminate time and space barriers, and allow the visitors to transcend time and space in a museum. In terms of collection, for new museums, precious digital resources, especially the media and digital resources carrying unique information, are a kind of irreplaceable collection themselves. Many large museums with a long history in the world have commenced the construction of a digital collection of documents, pictures, videos, sounds and other forms. The Experience Hall of the World Tourism Museum can also be committed to becoming a place for applying museum technology and content innovation, so as to render a learning-oriented entertainment experience for visitors. On this basis, we should build the World Tourism Museum into a “smart museum” to promote industry development with technological innovation, and design a set of technology application mechanisms that integrate the navigation system, collection management system, exhibition visualization, public service, etc. for different tourism topics in a targeted way. Moreover, a Joint Building and Shared Benefits Tourism Technology Laboratory can be established and a digital atlas can be prepared based on the tourism industry to empower the technological development in the cultural and tourism sectors.
According to the Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for the 14th Five-year Plan for Economic and Social Development and the Long-range Goals Through 2035 adopted at the 5th Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, we should promote integrated development of culture and tourism, and build a number of world-class tourist attractions with profound cultural deposits. Nowadays, museum tourism is on the rise and becoming an important option to meet people’s needs for a better life. Emerging at the historic moment under the opportunity of the new era, the World Tourism Museum will surely be built into a new model of cultural and tourism integration, and a new front for comprehensively displaying world tourism culture and telling Chinese tourism stories.
Source: China Tourism
Author: Gao Angzhi, Sun Yiwen