(US) National Travel and Tourism Week, DC's local museums and sites need a combo pass for visitors

According to Matthew Gilmore's Washington DC History Resources blog, DC has more than 70 museums and historic sites that aren't federal.

Market development issues.  DC's locally significant cultural sites have two big marketing disadvantages.

First, most visitors see DC only in terms of the national story, which means that when they visit they focus on the national museums and sites associated with the founding of the US or the general story of the country and reifying national memory and narrative, such as the Mount Vernon Plantation in Northern Virginia, which was the home of George Washington, the nation's first president.

That means that the local institutions need to be comprehensively, regularly, and creatively marketed and promoted and they aren't.  It doesn't help that we have dis-coordinated visitor marketing in the city and metropolitan area.

Second, in the DC area, most of the federally-related sites: museums; monuments; historic sites; and national parks; are free, putting all but the most prominent independently controlled sites at a disadvantage, because those sites charge admission.

Plus, the federal sites don't distribute non-federal visitor information.

It's tough for non-federal cultural facilities to survive in DC.  An example of this is the failure of the original City Museum ("Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," 2007), the Corcoran Gallery (">Should community culture master plans include elements on higher education arts programs?, "), but also more recently the Newseum ("Johns Hopkins to acquire Newseum building in Washington, D.C.," JHU press release: "What the Fall of the Newseum Says About News, and Museums," CityLab).  

The National Museum of Crime and Punishment shut down ("Crime museum is closing at the end of September," Washington Post), the Children's Museum has taken 15+ years to reopen after leaving DC originally for Prince George's County, although now it is back in DC ("New National Children's Museum will finally open Nov. 1 after a delay," Post), and the International Spy Museum recently relocated and changed their corporate status to nonprofit ("Will Tourists Follow the International Spy Museum to L'Enfant Plaza?," Washington City Paper).

Although, pretty much except for the International Spy Museum, all of these programs experienced some form of institutional failure independent of charging admissions.  On the other hand, having to charge in the face of a sea of free options, this made them vulnerable to anything but superlative operation.

City Passes.  Other cities don't have the same conditions.  Mostly, all sites have an admissions fee.  Most have visitor centers.  And there isn't competition over narrative.

Many of these cities have various visitor pass products, like "CityPass," which is a combo ticket that covers entrance into a set number of attractions, usually over a multi-day period, and depending, is bundled with some form of mobility.

For example, in San Francisco the passes include access to all MUNI transit services for no additional charge, even the cable cars, which normally cost $7 per ride.

DC does have passes.  One of DC's tour bus companies offers the Go Card Explorer Pass.

But since most tourists are primarily interested in the national museums and monuments, it likely isn't a big player in the tourism market, except that it is marketed alongside tourist bus transportation.

The Go Pass offers access to Mount Vernon, the National Geographic Museum, Wax Museum, Newseum, Washington Cathedral, a Washington Nationals Ballpark tour, the National Law Enforcement Museum, Artechouse, National Building Museum, Hillwood Estates, Museum of the Bible, audio tours at two Smithsonian Museums, two walking tour options, a boat cruise to Mount Vernon, and a boat tour at The Wharf. + the choice of the Alexandria Key to the City Pass too.

The Go Pass actually has a good array of attractions to choose from, but depending on your choice, it covers only 3 to 5 places total.  That's comparable to other pass products, but given that most people are likely to focus on attractions related to the national narrative, locally-focused sites are likely to get short shrift.

Maybe Alexandria's Key to the City pass is a better model.  The City of Alexandria has its own museum pass product.  It's $15 and includes access to 9 city-focused sites, plus a 40% discount (a savings of $8) on Mount Vernon.

This is a good approach.  The Alexandria museum pass product focuses on local sites, anchored to a discount on admission to the area's premier nationally-significant site.

The discount is an inducement to experiment with visiting some additional locally-focused sites for less than $1 per site after factoring in the admission discount, making consumption of local cultural history a low cost "line extension" to their visit.


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Note that this 2017 entry, "A proposal for a DCResidentCulturePass in DC ," is a related discussion of how to promote local attractions to local resident audiences.