The Louvre has received 9.6 million visitors in 2019, below the record absolute-2018 ($10.2 million), a decline that its direction is explained by its policy of “proactive” management of the influx in the summer, for visits more comfortable, with less waiting.
With 10.2 million visitors last year, the most visited museum in the world had recorded an increase of 25% compared to 2017 (8.1 Million), beating its own record (9.7 Million in 2012). The figure of 2019 is the third best result in the history of the Louvre.
“The real change has occurred in the summer of 2019 – June, July, August – where we welcomed an average of 20% less in 2018. This is 600,000 visitors in the least. It was proactive. It has sought to limit the attendance so that it does not exceed as 2018 million visitors per month. We had to declare some days the museum closed,” said AFP president and director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez.
“We are, he said, the only cultural institution in the world to take this turn. We tell people very clearly : we want to work together for a better quality of reception and not to accept more, always more, because this will not be possible”.
Booking on the internet, which use approximately 50% of visitors, is strongly “recommended”. “You can’t make the binding reservation”, as it is the case for the flagship exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci, which is open at the end of October. “We don’t have the tools and we do not want to really make it possible,” he said.
“The messages that we pass (on the internet), it is only the booking guarantee entry to the museum in thirty minutes, with a comfort of a visit”.
“Feat” of the Louvre-Lens
Mr. Martinez has held small impact the effect “yellow vests” on the annual attendance in decline : “75 % of visitors are foreign (American, Chinese head) and so, having prepared their trip well in advance, they are presented”.
“There has been, he also felt little impact of the strikes. The attendance is equivalent” to that of the other months of the year.” “We were able to open all day, sometimes with a little delay. It does not always open in terms of what we had planned. There are 20 % of the personal which are not able to come. Personal and visitors are limited by transport”.
The month of November has been particularly buoyant, with an increase of + 14%, under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. The museum announced a six-night additional for the exhibition. The booking will be open from 7 January.
The “Night of the Saturday” of the Louvre, a new appointment free of charge created in January 2019 and proposed the first Saturday of each month, was attended by more than 160,000 people in 2019, mainly in the île de france. The experimentation is extended in the first half.
In addition, Mr. Martinez welcomed “feat” achieved by the Louvre-Lens, in the Hauts-de-France, thanks to a “political public” in a disadvantaged region culturally : “for the first time since the opening, they will pass in 2019 the bar of 500,000 visitors. The major museums in this region are 200,000 to 300,000”.
As for the Louvre Abu-Dhabi, his programming has been able to attract two million visitors in two years, “a public asian who does not come again in Europe, notammment indian”.
Author(s): By AFP – Paris
