Description
No matter how good an interpreter, interpretive manager, interpretive center director – interpretive site board member or any other interpretive managerial position you serve – success (staying open and in business), or lack of operational success (closing) is based on an understanding of interpretive management economics. Yet most interpreters receive little or no actual training in the complexity of economics of the interpretive profession.
The various strategies for doing everything from determining the operational feasibility of a new interpretive center, planning and designing interpretive exhibits, strategies for increasing and managing visitor numbers, and basic cost/contact vs. cost/effectiveness for interpretive services we had to learn the hard way – by doing interpretive planning and management projects and learning as we went. Many economic analysis strategies had to be developed from scratch – then tried out to see if they worked, and if so, how accurate they were in predicting economic successes of various interpretive operations or calculating visitor numbers and visitation patterns.
It’s all about economic success – that’s the message from this course.
