Hosted for the first time in South America the conference will cover a wide range of heritage interpretation topics, presented by NAI members as well as opportunities to visit Tijuca National Park, site of Corcovado Mountain and the famed “Christ the Redeemer".
Find out more here:

This category includes heritage interpretation services, media and exhibits in both established and new visitor centres and interpretation centres . To find out more click here.

We were delighted when our ambitious architects plans sailed through the planning process without a hitch, and building approval was granted. We relocated all our tools, archives, equipment and materials, moved out of the office into some site huts and demolished the old building which was carried away in a series giant roll-off skips. All that remains is the original brick-built Victorian post-office building which will be incorporated into the new build. Our hope is to move in to the new HDC office in the spring of 2020....but we will see!

If they are not trained, qualified and accredited, they are not "professional"!

Unfortunately, they get often get hired because they present you with impressive looking proposals and fancy pitches - and because the majority customers don’t really know what makes a heritage interpretation professional, a professional, they get hired.

The result is poorly planned, designed and implemented interpretation, and that is bad for you!

Your site depends on interpretation for its survival – get it wrong and you could be out of business, and perhaps out of a job! 72% of our time at HDC is spent helping clients rescue poorly planned and designed interpretation that has been developed by so-called professionals that don't really know what they are doing.

These phony experts give a bad name to those of us that have spent years and years studying, training, earning our professional qualifications and struggling long and hard to build our skills and knowledge base.

Remember that if you hire someone without the proper training, the specialist skills and knowledge and a good level of demonstrable experience, you wont get the service and standards you need to make your interpretation project the success that it needs to be!

So, please help us to stamp out these bogus “experts” that damage our industry by asking a few simple questions...

• Do they have specialist heritage interpretation training? If so, where and how did they train and who with and for how long?

• Do they have recognized professional heritage interpretation qualifications? Membership of AHI or a similar organization is not a qualification! Accreditation or certification with NAI, NPS or at a university such as Michigan, Indiana or Perth is!

• Do they possess the specialist knowledge required by interpreters? Can they explain something simple such as recreational learning theory, experiential learning, mass customization, market of one, objective based interpretive master planning, pre-testing methodology or negative social proofing?

• Do they have any real experience? Just what sort of experience do they have? Is it first hand experience or just made up? Is heritage interpretation a full time career or something that is a sideline?

• Do they have the necessary skills? Do they have the full set of heritage interpretation skills or are they going to farm out the areas they don’t know about? Any a trained and qualified heritage interpretation professional should be able to offer you all the skills you need as a complete package.

• Do they work to the NAI or NPS standards of best practice? Do they work to recognized standards of best practice and are they accredited?

This is a great beginning for our newly opened Indi office!

What families are looking for now, more than ever before, is value and a return on their investment. The investment being the financial and emotional cost of visiting your site set against the perceived value of the educational and entertainment (“edutainment”) experience they receive from your site. Remember, your admission fee is just a fraction of the total cost for a day-trip to a voisitor attraction.

So what is the real cost for a family of 4 for a one-day visit to a visitor centre, heritage site, museum, zoo, or fun park, etc.? Lets do some numbers:

Car fuel: = £40.00
Refreshments: £4.50 per head = £18.00
Lunch: £9.00 per head = £36.00
Parking = £10.00
Your admission fee £7.50 per head = £30.00
Souvenirs - $20.00

TOTAL £144.00

Add to that organization stress and trip stress involved in getting to your site and that is a big investment!

These are just general, relatively conservative estimates, however the fact is that a day-out visit for a family of four, to an average heritage site is going to cost around £144.00.

Is a 2-3 hour visit to your site really worth £144.00? Just how many videos and computer games could you buy with £144.00? Or, how about a trip to the cinema or day wandering around a garden centre, walking or cycling in the countryside or some other activity? All are likely to cost less than £144.00.

Remember too, that there is stiff competition for those precious visitors - there are more attractions for visitors to choose from today, than there has ever been, and yet the total number of visitors visiting heritage sites each year remains fairly static.

Look around - many of your competitors will be leaner, fitter businesses that offer a more engaging, fulfilling and better value visitor experience than you…

So what are you going to do? What’s your plan?

If you want to survive this economic downturn, you need to act, and act quickly!

If you need help developing your survival plan, speak to us at HDC and we will help you ride the storm to quieter waters!

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