Jim, I'm inclined to agree with you, though on the basis of extremely limited
evidence. We get a steady, if not huge, trickle of messages re:our WWW site,
similar o those you mention. As well, I note an increasing number of messages
on TRAVEL-L referring people to WWW sites for information on attractions,
services, etc.

We are told that museum attendance in our national capital area is down from
last year, with other "nationals" reporting drops in attendance of between 12
and 30%! By contrast, we are projecting an INCREASE of 15% over last year for
the Canadian Museum of Civilization and 24% for the Canadian War Museum. Now,
the latter sharp rise is easily explained by the topical interest of the 50th
anniversary of the end of WWII and all the local events to commemorate it, but
we still wonder what impact the WWW (where both museums are represented) may be
having on us. The proportion of our visitors who come from outside Canada is
rising sharply, especially from locations outside North America and 28% of our
attendance (based on 10 studies conducted over 1993 and 1994) comes from
outside Canada. More recent studies suggest that this increase may be
accelerating, though it is far too soon to make any pronouncements.

What proportion of our visitors are influenced by what they see on WWW sites?
We will start to find out, as I am going to include  questions in forthcoming
visitor studies to try to see how many decisions to visit were influenced by
information previously obtained through surfing Web sites. I'd be interested in
any other research along those lines being done elsewhere.

harry.needham(at)cmcc.muse.digital.ca