I hope there is room for one more point of view in the visitors vs. tourist discussion.... To predict behavior or anticipate the wants of a visitor, a term like" tourist" is virtually useless and "guest" is totally useless. At least with "tourist" one knows a visitor is not local and that has both strategic and behavioral implications. It will embrace from 60% to 90% of all visitors to the world's best known museums. The tourist literature doesn't help much either since their definition of a tourist is someone whose principal purpose of travel is for leisure; yet many non-local visitors to museums are convention attenders or business travellers who take the time to visit a museum while in a destination city. Distinguishing between local visitors and tourist visitors seems more important to me. With tourist visitors I know there is a good chance the current visit will be a once-only visit. For such visitors, time is restricted and it is likely they want to see the best the museum has to offer in three hours or less. With the possible exception of museum professionals, this is true even of tourists who treasure "quiet contemplation" and regularly revisit their home museums. Museum visiting is one of an array of destination activities that attracts even the most intellectual among us to a destination city. It need not even be among the most important motives. Based on the research I have done or seen, about half of all non-local visitors to a well-known museum fall in this category. For about a third of tourist-visitors, there is more interest in obtaining evidence of a visit for the folks back home and/or for their own edification than in viewing the collection; in fact, in museums known outside their own precincts, that one-third may not even enter the galleries but be satisfied with something from the shop that "signals" their visit. This is a sort of secular pilgrimage and has been well documented by anthropologists (e.g., MacCannell, Graburn) Quite a few more tourist/visitors wish to view the one or few items for which a museum is most known (e.g., the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Nightwatch at the Rijksmuseum) but are happy to leave the Museum immediately once that has been accomplished. These may dominate the "streaker" segment Kersti (or George) have identified in previous Museum-L comments on this topic. I am probably in the minority among Museum-L participants but I think all three tourist types make legitimate use of museums and deserve equal consideration. What do you think? bob kelly Robert F. Kelly, Faculty of Commerce and Museum of Anthropology, (604) 822-8346 Fax: 822-8521 University of British Columbia [log in to unmask]