Maximizing Sunshine: 10 Summer Marketing Ideas for Museums and Attractions

For many, summertime means it’s time to travel! And this year, summer travel looks promising. There’s been a big jump in flight and hotel bookings in the U.S., according to recent AAA travel data. Europe is also looking at a strong summer for travel and tourism after a record-breaking summer in 2023.

To get in on the travel action, your museum or attraction needs a good marketing plan – and fast! Marketing, of course, goes hand in hand with your actual event schedule. If you need some inspiration or you want to know how to best position your museum or attraction this summer, read on for our top ten museum marketing ideas for summer.

When to start thinking about summer marketing

The further out you plan your event schedule and your marketing, the better. In big organizations, marketing campaigns are often approved on an annual basis. A major museum knows what exhibits are coming a year or two in advance. For summer marketing, spring is almost too late!

Even with the best intentions to plan ahead, things come up. Museum marketers often live in a triage state, focusing on the next big emergency first. This is a paradox many museum promoters find themselves very year, and once the summer actually gets rolling, you run out of time to do anything but hustle.

If you haven’t started thinking about your summer marketing yet, or your existing summer events aren’t performing like you want them to, you’re not alone. Read on to learn more about how to boost marketing for your summer season (and existing exhibits and events, too).

10 summer marketing ideas for museums and attractions

1. Honor the summer solstice

In ancient agrarian cultures, the summer solstice was traditionally a time for celebration. Planting was completed and the crops were starting to sprout. The summer solstice does not just mark the official start of summer (aka holiday time!), but the longest day of the year, granting plenty of daylight to be out and about.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., stays open late on summer solstice, with programs and performances scheduled well into the night. The museum institution partners with Hofstra University, which hosts a simultaneous Astronomy Festival on the National Mall. To hype the solstice celebration, the Smithsonian’s digital marketing is laden with sun imagery from its collections.

If celebrating with the sun does not correspond with your museum or attraction, there’s always the moon! The Strawberry Moon in June, the Buck Moon in July, the Sturgeon Moon in August, and the Harvest Moon in September are all full moons worth worshiping. Start strategizing your astronomical alignment now so you’re ready to invite in visitors for these special days of summer.

2. Hone in on major holidays

Ljungsbro, Sweden: A crowd of people gathered together and dancing around Midsummer pole on Midsummer celebration. Photo by Elzbieta Krzysztof on Shutterstock

Speaking of solstice, Sweden’s Midsommar celebration, known locally as Midsommarstång, has long been a celebratory occasion in the far northern hemisphere. For the nearby museums and attractions that enjoy 18 hours of daylight in June, marketing their venues around Midsommar just makes sense. Everyone’s in the mood to celebrate, so why not invite them to do so at your museum?

There are plenty of specific holidays and occasions that mark moments of summer in other parts of the world. In Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, the lanterns float every August for the Aomori Nebuta Matsuri Festival. In the U.S., Independence Day in July calls for a riotous celebration of fireworks. The messy La Tomatina Festival in Buñol, Spain, tempts residents and visitors to throw tomatoes at each other in late August. In Poland, the midsummer holiday known as Wianki has roots in ancient pagan fertility rites. And in many parts of the world, late summer means regional oyster festivals.

What’s big in your area? Hitching your star to a local, regional, or national celebration is a smart way to increase the reach of your marketing and take advantage of audiences that may be coming to the area for other reasons. This might mean a tweak in your social media messaging or it might inspire a brand-new marketing campaign.

3. Ask visitors to stay late, or even stay over

Sleepover in the Nereid Monument gallery. © Benedict Johnson. Photo by British Museum

Lean into the lengthening daylight and extend your museum or attraction’s hours. This may already be a part of your summer plan. Look for ways to capitalize on these extended hours by making them special. Depending on your setup, think garden parties, classical music concerts, events catered to specific audiences, and evening soirées. Or – and here’s a bold idea – invite visitors to spend the night!

During the pandemic, Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, did just this. In 2020, the historic castle outside of Amsterdam launched its Camping in the Plum Garden experience, an invitation to 20 families to spend the night on the grounds, where they could have drinks in the garden, picnic on the lawn, and indulge in a private tour of the castle in small groups.

Family-friendly sleepovers are a big hit for many museums as well. The British Museum in London invites young guests to experience the museum after dark and sleep in the Egyptian and Assyrian galleries. These Young Friends Sleepovers are fully curated, action-packed evenings with workshops, activities, and storytelling, followed by breakfast in the morning.

Of course, a sleepover requires the staff, security, and potentially insurance to keep everyone happy and safe while also protecting your assets. But it can lead to unforgettable memories for visitors and incredible organic marketing opportunities for you.

4. Launch a pre-booking motivational promotion

Symbol for a travel offer. Hand pics cubes with the text ‘early bird’ instead of ‘last minute’. Photo by FrankHH on Shutterstock

There’s an art to the timing of ticket sales. Some people love to make last-minute decisions about where to spend their time. But as a museum or attraction reliant on optimizing your ticket sales for revenue, you’re likely hopeful that most people will book in advance. Give them the incentive to do so.

Early bird pricing is one technique. Giving visitors a discount if they book tickets by a certain date makes it worth their while to commit. Having an easy online ticket checkout process is obviously key to this effort. For museums and attractions that consider summer the “off season,” a discounted off-peak rate is the way to go. And offering first-time visitors a special promotional rate can also increase your audience.

One final summer-specific idea: a discounted evening rate for the extended daytime hours. Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, for instance, offers visitors free admission from 3 pm to 9 pm on the first Thursday of every month. While free admission may not boost your actual revenue, it can be a great way to increase your visitor numbers, spread awareness of your venue, and gain significant numbers of loyal followers.

5. Position your venue as the place to beat the heat

Overheated man waving paper fan suffer from heat, feels sluggish and drowsiness. Photo by DimaBerlin on Shutterstock

Weatherwise, summer can be tricky. Indoor museums are at a disadvantage when the weather is optimal, and outdoor attractions are often entirely reliant on good weather. On the other hand, people love to come into a nice air-conditioned space when the sun is blazing.

In Europe, many tourists are starting to find summer to be hot and crowded. In 2024, Condé Nast Traveler notes a trend toward “an increased interest in lesser-known destinations offering a more laid back (and cooler) holiday.”

This is positive news for off-the-beaten-path museums and those with extra powerful AC systems. Positioning your venue as a place to beat the heat and escape the sweaty throngs could be your mainstay this summer.

6. Connect your online and offline marketing with QR codes

Young man spending time in modern art gallery scanning QR code using his smartphone to get more information about photo on wall. Photo by SeventyFour on Shutterstock

In the summer, people are out and about, on the move and going places. Take advantage of this with strategically placed out-of-home advertising, or OOH, which includes publicly visible large-format media such as billboards and posters that appear on the freeway, in the subway station or airport terminals.

For eons, OOH ads were notoriously unengaging. Then came QR codes. QR, in this case, literally stands for “quick response,” and is a way for a person with a smartphone to quickly scan the code and access your ticketing page – perhaps with a special promo code.

QR codes aren’t just useful for getting people to buy tickets or book spots in general. There are many creative ways you can incorporate them into your OOH. Perhaps you have a new exhibit you want to let the world know about, or a recent upgrade to your facility. QR codes allow you to direct digital visitors to a specific website or social media spot for more information.

QR codes have helped connect offline marketing with the digital experience, and for museums and attractions, this is an excellent way to inspire viewers to follow through with ticket purchase. It’s also an effective way to track data on your OOH advertising so you know whether it’s working well enough.

7. Plant a garden

Photo credit: Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire

In a time when climate awareness and environmental sustainability are incredibly important to all businesses, but especially to culture-holders like museums, planting a single tree is a gesture. But a whole garden can make a statement and simultaneously create a gorgeous, peaceful experience for your visitors.

Some museums naturally incorporate beautiful gardens. The Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire in France hosts an annual International Garden Festival along with Nocturnes in the Garden, a series of poetic musical walks in a dreamlike botanical setting. Winterthur Museum, the Delaware-based museum of American decorative arts, boasts 60 acres of gardens along with an impressive catalog of decorative arts objects and rare imprints – plus 1,000 acres of protected meadows, woodlands, ponds, and waterways.

Your museum or attraction might not have the acreage or the resources to build out a true botanical wonder, but there are ways to get creative with your gardening as part of your museum marketing strategy. Rooftop gardens, walled gardens, indoor greenhouses, and hydroponic gardens are all options for urban spaces.

The roof garden (and the bar) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a famous seasonal spot for museum-related events and is also available to any ticket holder to the museum. Not just a pleasant botanical space, the Met’s roof garden has been written up in many publications, and New York Magazine calls it “one of the best pickup spots in Manhattan.” While being a hotspot for dating may not be your museum’s goal, good PR most certainly is, and a high-profile garden can bring that type of exposure.

Gardens take cultivation – and not just literally. You’ll want to create a strategy, set a budget, poll your staff for interest, and potentially hire additional staff or bring in outside resources to help with the physical work. Step one is to create a garden plan that suits your museum or attraction’s theme and culture.

8. Throw an al fresco party

Photo credit: Night Forms: Infinite Wave

If you have any kind of outdoor space at your disposal – whether it’s a garden, a back alley, an empty lot, or manicured grounds, close your eyes and imagine what sort of magic you could make there. Now, add it to your list of museum marketing ideas.

Evening parties work well in the summer, and even better if they include multisensory exhibits – lights, music, and artwork. As just one example, the New Jersey contemporary art museum Ground For Sculpture launched a two-year series of rotating outdoor exhibits. The first, Night Forms, included interactive art scattered among the existing sculptures in the museum gardens, along with stunning displays of light.

Key to the Ground For Sculpture outdoor exhibit series was a partnership with outside artists and other organizations. These types of collaborations make outdoor events both more economically viable and more exciting. Having multiple entities involved is also helpful when it comes to museum marketing ideas. The more organizations are involved in marketing an event, the bigger the reach.

Consider what kind of outdoor activities would sync with your museum or attraction’s vibe. If your attraction is already outside – for instance, if it’s an amusement park – think beyond what you already know. Where might there be opportunities to add to your current experience and bring in a new set of summer visitors by hosting a particular type of event?

9. Dream up a festival

Museumsufer Festival, Frankfurt. Photo credit: Intrepix via Shutterstock

Intimate outdoor gatherings can be wonderful, but nothing says summer like a giant, over-the-top party. If you have the time and want to go big, think festival.

Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, is equally famous for its live music shows as its incredible collection of contemporary art. Summer begins each year with the launch of the Solid Sound alternative music festival and ends with FreshGrass, a bluegrass festival that draws huge crowds from miles around.

In Frankfurt, the Museumsufer Festival takes place every August, when Europeans tend to be on holiday. A collaboration of the German city’s esteemed cultural institutions, the English as the Museum Riverbank Festival, combines arts, culture, and music along the riverbank of the Main, and attracts around 2.5 million people each summer.

One of the challenges of launching a festival is that it requires the effort and contributions of a lot of different outside partners – musicians, technicians, food vendors, sanitation companies, and much more. This is also the advantage of launching a festival, though – you can recruit a lot of support and a huge marketing net.

10. Team up with an OTA or another marketing partner

Happy business woman manager handshake at office meeting. Photo by insta_photos on Shutterstock

Summer is indeed a peak time for planning events and launching promotions at museums and attractions, and having the right partner can be paramount to that effort. An online travel agency, or OTA, often brings a fresh spin to museum marketing. They also often have a large built-in audience to deliver promotional ideas to in the first place.

A bigger OTA typically has a destination website known to travelers as a good place to get information about museums and attractions. For instance, in 2024, Tiqets has posted on such topics as The Ultimate Vienna Travel Guide and The 10 Best Things to Do in Madrid With Kids. Embedded within those posts are links to purchase tickets, making the customer journey from “research” to “buy” as smooth as possible – thus giving mentioned museums an advantage.

OTAs don’t just help you promote, of course. They can also streamline the online ticketing experience for your visitors and enable you to participate in ticketing packages with other nearby events. Partnering with an OTA is often a crucial business decision for museums and attractions.

For more insight into how your museum or attraction can capitalize on seasonal marketing ideas this summer, next summer, and all year round, download the e-book Museum Marketing: A Go-to Guide to Maximizing Visitors All Year Round.