Every so often, a new museum is announced, its size in the hundreds of thousands of square feet, its cost in the millions, and its interior and exterior spaces imagined in visionary drawings featuring galleries filled with collections and engaged visitors. These exciting and glamorous reveals are often accompanied with an estimated attendance number predicting the many visitors who will show up. This part of the rollout has always made me wonder: where do the numbers come from? To better understand how a museum establishes this future attendance number and what it represents to the institution (spoiler alert: everything), I connected with Angie Judge, an audience insights expert and CEO of cultural data analytics company Dexibit. Over the course of our conversation, we discuss topics like how and why a future museum project identifies a projected attendance number, how institutions refined attendance figures during the pandemic, and ways to better use audience insights for decision-making.

Adam Rozan: Hi, Angie. Can you please introduce yourself and your company, Dexibit? I’d also like to know how you started working with museums.

Angie Judge: It’s great to be here, Adam. Thanks for having me. My work started with technology, but my interests in the arts and culture kept gravitating toward the cultural sector over time. I worked with technology companies like HP and Amdocs before founding my own business, which focused on using data in the cultural sector to help organizations better understand their visitors.

Today, Dexibit provides data analytics for visitor attractions, supporting cultural and commercial attractions with a combined visitation of four hundred million annually. We integrate with over one hundred software and hardware source systems, from footfall, ticketing, POS (point of sale), and CRM (customer relationship management) to locations, reviews, weather, and more. We bring that data together for data newbies and experts alike, providing dashboards, reports, insights, and forecasts using AI.

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AR: What was the spark that led you to merge technology with culture?

AJ: That’s a great question. I’ve always been passionate about culture and museums specifically, but I realized early on that there was a massive opportunity for these institutions to leverage data better. They were sitting on a treasure trove of data. At the same time, the hunger for visitor insights and the technology to utilize that information to enhance visitor experiences wasn’t being used to its full potential. That was the lightbulb moment for me—realizing that technology and data could unlock many possibilities to understand visitors and their experiences.

AR: What’s the biggest challenge for cultural organizations in using data today?

AJ: The biggest challenge is twofold. First, there’s the issue that data is often spread across many systems and departments, so getting a clear, cohesive view of it can be tricky. The second challenge is cultural. Many institutions still develop data literacy and a culture of making data-informed decisions. It can be scary to start with, especially if it’s made to sound like something for more technical people. Sometimes, people are rightfully wary of trusting AI or leaning too heavily into data that it might detract from their mission. But the opposite is true. When used thoughtfully, data can grow, diversify, and deepen audiences and their engagement while sustaining the institution commercially.

AR: How can cultural institutions overcome those barriers?

AJ: I believe in democratizing data, which starts with demystifying it and reducing time to insight. People shouldn’t have to go through others to get data, and data shouldn’t go through people to get reported. It should be part of everyone’s job, not just one person’s role. This demands collaboration, education, and leadership, creating a culture where insight-inspired decisions are celebrated rather than feared. Cultural institutions aren’t large enough enterprises to build everything from scratch and are better off putting their energy into actioning data rather than just getting to it, so it’s also about creating partnerships with technology companies or other cultural organizations to share knowledge and solutions.

AR: From your client work, can you share some specific examples of how the museums that Dexibit works with are using data to make informed decisions?

AJ: Among our favorite museums to work with are the teams at Minneapolis Institute of Art, Planet Word, and Brooklyn Museum. These teams have something in common: they all do a fantastic job of shaping and pursuing particular questions to ask of their data. Their questions are tailored around understanding a specific topic, say opening times, retail basket mix, visitor origin trends, or giving price points. Because data can tackle so many things, homing in on meaningful areas for insight connected to levers within the museum’s control to change helps teams focus on strategy execution. It’s a real skill.

AR: What role do you see data playing in the future of museums and cultural institutions?

AJ: It is transformative. The modern world has put a lot of pressure on cultural institutions: competition for visitor attention, rising visitor expectations, and increasing costs. Data is the key to tackling all of that. Data is central to how these institutions function, from understanding visitor behavior to predicting trends and improving operational efficiencies. It’s not just about numbers—it’s about using those numbers to tell a story and to connect that deeply with the work to serve the public.

AR: You told me earlier that many institutions changed how they count visitors during the pandemic. What were those changes?

AJ: The pandemic allowed many museums to modernize or update their technology, often involving visitor counting methods, whether through footfall, ticketing, or member scanning. Many museums moved away from manual clickers and installed cameras, introduced better ticketing systems, or integrated their CRM, allowing them to improve data accuracy, automation, and scope. Over the first half of the 2020s, many cultural institutions have undergone rigorous strategic planning for a new world and often have systems modernization in play. These are all perfect environmental conditions for prioritizing data.

AR: I’m unfamiliar with that term; what is a footfall count?

AJ: Footfall refers to the number of people entering the museum. During the pandemic, museums needed real-time data to manage capacity, so they installed connected camera sensors, which are about 20 percent more accurate than hand-held manual clickers.

AR: How else has ticketing changed?

AJ: Many free museums didn’t previously ticket attendees before the pandemic. Now that these systems have been introduced, they provide more data, like zip codes of visitor origin and demographics, or data to analyze booking preferences. Many visitor attractions that didn’t previously offer advance passes have retained them post-pandemic, and visitors that didn’t use to book in advance still do.

AR: You’ve previously said that a museum’s attendance number is a “glamour metric.” What do you mean by that, and what metrics should institutions then track and report?

AJ: To a degree, visitation, or at least how it’s calculated, doesn’t matter so long as everyone is clear on it. You can never really meaningfully compare the plain visitation of two attractions together. What matters are the patterns, trends, and conversions. Some attractions count from footfall, some tickets, some include after-hours events, some don’t, some include staff, and some discount it. If I can use that word, what counts is if there’s growth or decline. It’s about whether visitors engage, how they feel, and if they return as members. It’s not just about the visitor number; it’s about audience diversity, segmentation, and behavior over time. For example, your calculation method can inflate your visitation number. That might sound great when you’re reporting it, but it will hurt your average revenue per visitor or your member conversion rate. Attendance is just one number—it has to be part of the bigger picture.

AR: What should smaller museums do if they don’t have the resources for in-house research and evaluation staff or the funds to work with companies like yours?

AJ: Even if you’re starting with simple numbers on a spreadsheet, you can still work to improve your team’s data culture. Create space and time to review the data together, discuss what you see, and set goals. Focus on what’s manageable, then build from there. Data shouldn’t be left to an analyst to do anyhow. It needs to be part of everyone’s job to look at and talk about data, from the front desk to the board room. Data is part of how great teams collaborate, make decisions, and hold themselves accountable for the work.

AR: I also wanted to chat with you about estimated attendance numbers for new museum projects. When these projects are in the works, at some point the future institutions will publicly share their projected attendance numbers along with architectural renderings and other materials. For example, here in Washington, DC, The National Children’s Museum projected 300,000 visitors a year, and The Law Enforcement Museum said it would also get 300,000 visitors. In Nashville, Tennessee, the National Museum of African American Music projected 250,000 and in Riverside, California, the Cheech Marin Center said 100,000. Where do these numbers come from?

AJ: Projecting visitation for new museums is an exceptionally challenging task. And these examples are at the smaller end of the scale. Larger, new-build institutions often have much bigger expectations—sometimes two or three times that—for example, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, with an estimated two million visitors a year when it opens, or Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum with five million visitors; which it should be noted is potentially even more challenging to meet.

AR: Okay, suppose you want to open a new museum. To do that, you need an audience assessment of what’s possible attendance-wise. Is that right?

AJ: Sort of. It’s a market exploration effort to size the addressable market for the area in question and your assumptions for how well you can do. I’d advise looking at the total addressable market and narrowing it down to the total serviceable market you can realistically appeal to and reach. Analyze census data for origin, demographics like age and income, and other factors. Ideally, public data from different attractions, including potential competition sites, destination marketing authorities, or third-party sources like mobile device data, should be used. From that catchment, you’ll have to make realistic assumptions about what level of penetration you can achieve with your marketing budget, plus what proportion of your visitors will return. Be realistic about the barriers to visit, like location, parking or transport, and price. Understand who your target audience is and what comparable institutions are achieving.

AR: This is a research-heavy process that seems localized to the area where the museum in question is being planned.

AJ: Yes. And it’s important to revisit these simulations constantly. New-built museums are many years in the process, from conception to funding to design to building. Too often, these projections are made years before the doors open, and things have changed by the time they do.

AR: Is this more or less a defined process, with best practices and so on?

AJ: No, there’s no universal method. There’s also a wide range of skill levels amongst consultants who are often engaged to do this work and an even more comprehensive range of how much scrutiny the numbers receive. There can be a lot of tension between wanting an aspirational number and the need for a realistic one.

AR: It’s easy to imagine the potential risks here. What does having the number help the museum do? Meaning, what’s the number for?

AJ: These numbers are used for several things. First are expectations used for fundraising, which can take five or more years leading up to the build. Often, the number informs the capacity design of the physical space. Then, it becomes a financial assumption that underpins the business model. If the number is wrong or lacks enough contingencies, it can affect per-capita revenue budgets, which, times by the visitor number, forms the revenue assumption. If those numbers are wrong, that can lead to significant financial fragility. Closer to opening, this number helps museums gear up their operations regarding staffing and resource allocation. At that stage, it has to be converted from an annual number into a daily forecast, which we usually do using unified industry data from nearby and similar locations, plus other new builds.

AR: That’s fascinating; the number around which the whole project is built, from the building’s size to the number of staff.

AJ: That’s right! Yes, everything from the number of staff needed on the museum floor, the number of bathrooms, the size of the eatery, and the number of elevators is based on that number.

AR: So, you have the number. Would potential contractors, say food and beverage, test the number, or do they go along?

AJ: From my experience, they usually trust the recommendation. Sometimes, it is even a part of contractual negotiation or, at least, expectation-setting with the operating partner. As a result, its accuracy can have high stakes.

AR: What happens with the number after the museum opens?

AJ: This number usually converts into a goal by which opening performance is measured. Ideally, by then, the annual number should be forecast appropriately to allow for seasonal variation throughout the opening year and the adoption curve from initial visitors so that the first weeks and months are pretty much judged against the number of days the museum has been opened for.

In reality, there are two annual visitation numbers: the opening number for a year or two and then the annual number the museum settles at, usually from year three onwards. There’s always a sophomore slump, where all the locals visiting once to check it out will see it within the first twenty-four months. Still, after that, ongoing visitation consists of more new entrants, repeat visitors, and tourists. So, that newly settled number is a crucial assumption in the long-term business model. And, sadly, sometimes that new number plays a role in adjusting staffing and other changes that would occur as the museum settles into its financial realities.

AR: Staffing is built up to manage the opening and the first wave of attendance, but when attendance inevitably drops, the new number is used for staff restructuring. If we know this, shouldn’t both numbers be created from the beginning?

AJ: That’s right. It’s a challenging lesson for new institutions, and there’s always tension between wanting an aspirational number to attract funding and more achievable goals; it’s another thing to plan for a post-opening attendance decline.

AR: I understand that this is both an art and a science. Do potential museums do popups or test the market?

AJ: Absolutely! Pop-ups allow you to test the market, build a brand, and trial ideas, achieving impact ahead of opening. The Museum of Ice Cream did this well before opening a permanent location, as did M+ in Hong Kong with its temporary exhibition pavilion. It’s also a great way to create demand before opening the doors and to begin capturing subscribers or members to build a demand community ready for opening.