Strategies for Increasing Visitors’ Interaction: The Case of Virtual Museum and Exhibitions

In the last few decades museums attempt to be more visitor-oriented by understanding of visitor preferences. This is achieved by adopting new technologies that increase the visitor’s interaction on site and enhance visitor’s experience at museum. Internet and digital technologies provide opportunities for the exhibition’s audience by building communities to share information and for curators who interact with visitors by getting feedback, comments, ideas, and contributions. Emerging technologies offer many opportunities to museums, not only providing access to information but also to the development of virtual museums that can compete in the contemporary marketplace. Although there are different motivations, different reasons and expectations from the interaction with the museum, not all institutions in the heritage tourism embrace this approach. Despite the realization that new technologies can offer a sound basis upon which museums transform the traditional visitors’ experience and increase visitors’ interaction, there are limited researches in this area. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide a state of the art of the literature relating to the emergence of new technologies and its increasingly important role with visitors’ experience and interaction in cultural sector. The practical contribution of this paper is that it provides guidelines to curators regarding the strategies that can be implemented in order to get visitors involved in the overall museum experience and make visits more enjoyable.