UK Museum admission prices, visitor numbers and VAT

Yes, but that doesn’t make any difference to the ticket buying public, you just simply tick a box and hang on to your receipt – or am I forgetting something?

What is being forgotten is that the Gift Aided price is higher than the non-gift aided; the years free return visits are in recognition of the extra cost; the same reason as why we give the cafe vouchers!

As for trading companies; the trading activity is deemed to be a more risky activity and by separating it off you’re restricting the liability for the charity. The current tax rules allows for ‘all trading profits’ to be covenanted (I think you can also use Gift Aid now) and thereby no tax is paid and it is therefore deemd to be ‘Tax-efficient’!

Whilst in oposition the Conservative Party said they would simplify the rules and allow some trading activities to come back within the main charity – so far that hasn’t been addressed!

In the IOM the charity rules don’t require us to have a separate trading company, which simplifies things a bit.

They don’t have to be in the Uk either, but there are tax reasons for doing so – I’m a trustee of a small charity, and our Treasurer (who is pretty experienced auditor in the charity sector) explained it thus:

A charity has two main types on income – Donations and Trading Income. Of the trading income, it can be split into Primary Purpose Income and Fundraising Income. Primary purpose trading is where the trading is carried out in furtherance of the charity’s objects (e.g. admission fees to the Museum?). Any trading which is not directly related to the Charity’s aims is fundraising income. Profits from this can be liable to tax if total income exceeds a certain % of the charity’s overall income.

By having a separate, but wholly owned trading company, it’s profits are subject to tax on their own, and the contribution to the Charity is a donation towards primary purpose. That way, the income can be kept below taxable level for both.

That’s a simplistic view, and whole books have been written on the subject, but that’s the main reason for having the separate company.

Manx Aviation & Military Museum reply

1. Yes
2. No
3. No. We charged £1 admission for our first couple of years but at the suggestion of our honorary patron, A.M. Ian Macfadyen, we dropped the charge. Visitor figures rose significantly – just for the saving of a quid! However income from donations and sales rose so removal of the entry fee was a good move.
4. No charge but our volunteers are very good at pointing out the location of the donation boxes whilst they are talking to the visitors.
5. Small shop selling kits, books, small die-casts (Corgi Red Arrows at £4.99 are a best-seller). In the IOM the charity rules don’t require us to have a separate trading company, which simplifies things a bit.
6. No.
7. Up by 12% in the last year, having shown steady growth throughout the life of the museum.

JDK in post no. 7 hits every nail on the head. I would agree with everything he says. One additional point – keep up to the maintenance. It’s very easy to let things slip. I always try to look at the museum from the visitor’s point of view – I want to see clean toilets, no spider webs, lights working, no falling-down signs etc.

Good luck.

IIRC only if you do your admission as a Gift Aided donation, that’s a condition of the scheme.

Yes, but that doesn’t make any difference to the ticket buying public, you just simply tick a box and hang on to your receipt – or am I forgetting something?
Interesting point about the cafes aswel, Newark is very nice and you are looked after well.
FAAMs Swordfish cafe is benchmark for me, decent fresh cooked meals or cold food, and all at a decent price, Cosfords’ is frankly terrible.

JDK mentions toilets, yes this is vital to get right, and it seems that most museums that I have been to do get this right.

Keeping the partner happy, I try and visit museums without the dead weight of an uninterested (nay positively anti sometimes!) partner, but sometimes that is unavoidable.
When we visited the Malta Aviation Museum she was made to feel that her visit was special and the volunteers made a point of explaining things to her and even getting her seated in the G-91, she had a lovely positive visit as a result, that equates to two very happy visitors!

great thread

Great thread- some great info for a fledgeling museum – please keep it coming.

Bottisham Airfield Museum

1. Not yet.
2. No.
3. Donations only except for open days where we charge £3.
4. see above
5. Yes – BAM T-shirts, limited edition prints, books & magasines
6. No.
7. For general museum opening not open longer enough to tell. Numbers seem down a bit on the open days which we have been running longer.

Would be interesting to get a summary of the collated answers!

Cheers

J

….. however they do have an outstanding system that if you pay to go in once, any return visits within the year are free – that is a great idea…..

IIRC only if you do your admission as a Gift Aided donation, that’s a condition of the scheme. At Newark we use an alternative scheme whereby you’re given a voucher to spend in the cafe! 😉

I have seen a stall at a couple of shows which sells just that. Polished up bits of aircraft scrap, some made into keyfobs and engraved. And some are sold with a certificate of authentication, for what it’s worth.

Regarding items for sale in shops. You do need to cater for all tastes and age groups,
not just for children or for people with £20 or more to spend on a book or set of DVDs

I also believe that there is a need for items that are unique to that particular
location. For instance, if a museum works on restoring old aircraft, there
must be a lot of scrap metal, which would otherwise go for recycling.

If some of the small pieces (2″ square) were polished up engraved with
the aircraft details, and mounted on a block of wood, I reckon they would
fly off the shelves at around £5 a time. Charge much more and they would
gather dust.

A few years ago at Southend airport, during the airshow, RAF ground crew
were selling small fan blades from the Harrier, at a couple of pounds each.
They were going like hot cakes. Because they were something different,
rather than an inflatable Arrows Hawk, or plastic kit.

Have the FAAM always charged entry ? We went there about eight years ago, and I don’t recall having to pay.

Good point, I believe that FAAM have always charged an entry fee, however they do have an outstanding system that if you pay to go in once, any return visits within the year are free – that is a great idea.
Should be noted that parking is free aswel, which the RAFM museums are not anymore.

Have to agree with the remarks about volunters.
I know it was a long time ago but once the Southend museum opened the volunteers were made to feel unwelcome and there was llittle attempt to give them anything to do. A sensible idea might have been to give us our own project to work on. There were several unloved airframes laying around at that time so they could have made one of them the volunteers project. We would have felt wanted and we would have been encouraged by seeing the airframe progress as we worked our way through the rebuild. Little encouragement meant that the volunteer numbers tailed off and ultimately the management at that time chose the opposite route and banned us from the building altogether!
Shop stock is a difficult one. There is no doubt that you do need some of the “touristy” items and something for the children (cheap diecast aeroplanes usually go down well along with your own museum postcards of some of the exhibits which can be bought cheaply in small quantities if you know where to buy).
I do think you have to be careful with the items aimed at the enthusiast market such as kits or diecast scale models. As others have said there are plenty of dealers who will sell these at a discount and having been in that trade for 25+ years I still haven’t worked out how some of them make any profit.
My advice would be keep kits etc to aircraft which are relevant to the museum as this will fuel more impulse buys. If you have built kits on display then lay out the kit parts alongside so that the buyer can see what they are getting. If you can commission your own unique decals to build the actual aircraft you have on display then all the better. You also have the option of selling the decal pack seperately to enthusiasts – not as lucrative as selling a kit as well but better than nothing.
Don’t get your local IPMS champion to build the kits to exhibition standard. The built kits need to look good but equally they need to plant the idea in the visitors mind that they could build one to the same standard if they spent a few evenings working away at home.
Above all when buying stock never fall into the trap of buying what YOU like. You have to think along the lines of I really like that but will others like it and will they be prepared to pay the correct retail price for it. If you think you will need to discount to sell then forget it because model trade margins don’t make discounts viable – A 10% discount on the retail price means you are giving away roughly one third of your profit. The only way many of the larger retail outfits that discount survive is by turning over huge quantities of stock which requires huge capital investment and unless you have massive financial clout buying big quantities of one poor seller could finish your business.

Alan – I see you don’t live too far away so becoming a FoD might be very cost-effective. I reckon I pay for my membership several times over in a year.

I might wake up and decide to spend the day at a museum, FAAM and RAFM Cosford of equidistant to me, but Cosford is free and that is where I visit more often.

Have the FAAM always charged entry ? We went there about eight years ago, and I don’t recall having to pay.

Then again, my memory isn’t that good 🙂

Maybe its cultural….

We ran for a time on a by donation admission….people felt if it was by donation that meant free and it was a disaster.

We still do several days/events a year that are by donation (part of our insuring access to all) and they are very, very poor revenue generators.

We charge admission $10 CDN adult as well as other rates and admission numbers have only increased.

Our experience is that if its free you are getting what you pay for and if there is an admission it must be good.

Now I am speaking about the general public, veterans and enthusiasts are a different demographic and have always been very supportive. But you need the general public to get the numbers to make the economics work and more importantly to create awareness and to educate them on the history.

I also agree with all the comments on interactives and kids interactives.

We have dress up sections, ejection seats, select aircraft they can enter, mechanical and electronic flight simulators as well as 11 audio visual stations with seating and more.

Tom

Here’s an interesting report on the ‘politics’ of Free Admissions to the ‘Nationals’ http://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/free-admission-and-the-lottery

Re the shop side of things I absolutely agree with Bruce and others, I have bought stuff at Newark, Cosford, & FAAM Museum shop (and others) that I could possibly have got cheaper online, you can’t beat that enthused feeling and then being presented by something related to buy. For example I brought a Valiant DVD at Cosford, a model Canberra at Newark after sitting in their example – I probably would never have bought them otherwise.
I think anything aviation will sell.

Re charges, as a visitor I am hard up and it does make a difference if it is free to get in, especially as I have to travel a good distance to get to amuseum, unfortunately fuel prices are having an effect, something I was talking about with the FAAM curator. I might wake up and decide to spend the day at a museum, FAAM and RAFM Cosford of equidistant to me, but Cosford is free and that is where I visit more often.
The majors can obviously charge, but I think a smaller/newer museum may struggle with visitor numbers if they do. Strangely I will happily donate money more easily than pay to go in – unsure why really.

I enquired about this several years ago. The reply I had was something along
the lines of : “We have to charge, as there are private companies based here”

I don’t quite see what difference that makes. :confused:

It’s to do with the VAT exemption/recovery that allows other national collections to have free entry – I can’t recall the exact details, but as Duxford has the private companies based there, who are in partnership, then they don’t meet the criteria for free admission.

EDIT: The details are here, if you want to wade through them, but as I understand it, it’s basically because they make money from their principal activity of running the airfield.

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000178&propertyType=document

Not sure how the economics work out but if you are going to visit several times a year taking out a membership of Duxford Aviation Society might be worth considering.

Planemike

No, wouldn’t be that often as it a 120mile round trip.

Some advise from across the pond…

First piece of advise

A museum’s first duty is to survive!

Look at every possible source of revenue both in and out of the box.
At the Alberta Aviation Museum we do things as revenue generation that make others flinch…but it allows us to pursue the core duties of preservation, education, restoration etc.

Second

Marketing

If no one knows you are there you’re dead.

In this day and age a museum needs to be an exciting vibrant place that people (even those that don’t care about aviation) want to come to.

Last

Protect the core values at all times

Now just for comparison

1. Is your museum a registered charity?
Yes

2. Does it have any paid employees?
(6) + 2 part time, note we are open 363 days a year

3. Do you charge admission?
Yes

4. What are your charges/concessions etc?
www.albertaaviationmuseum.com, we charge for education programs K-12, summer camps and other programs as well

5. Do you have any other revenue streams (selling stock, refreshments etc.)
Yes as well as rentals,events, event planning, equipment rentals, TV and Movie work, education programming and others.

6. Are you VAT registered?
N/A

7. How have your visitor numbers changed in the last 12-18 months (i.e. during the recession) Are they up, down or unchanged?
Increasing…with changes we have made in operations and promotions over the last (5-6) years we have doubled in almost every area.

Wishing you all the best feel free to contact me direct.

Tom Hinderks
Alberta Aviation Museum
Edmonton, Alberta
[email]eahs.execdirector@shawbiz.ca[/email]

I enquired about this several years ago. The reply I had was something along
the lines of : “We have to charge, as there are private companies based here”

I don’t quite see what difference that makes. :confused:

I would visit more often, if it weren’t going to cost in the region of £30 every time, for the two of us.

Not sure how the economics work out but if you are going to visit several times a year taking out a membership of Duxford Aviation Society might be worth considering.

Planemike

On the subject of museums, why does IWM Duxford charge an entry fee when all the other IWM museums don’t ? this is not a whinge I’m just curious.

I enquired about this several years ago. The reply I had was something along
the lines of : “We have to charge, as there are private companies based here”

I don’t quite see what difference that makes. :confused:

I would visit more often, if it weren’t going to cost in the region of £30 every time, for the two of us.