The symbiosis between the contemporary museum, emotional and experiential tourism

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The extremely rapid transformations that human society has experienced in recent decades have entailed changes in all fields and institutions, which have been forced to accept them in order to ensure their own survival. The museum, as a cultural institution preserving the national heritage, has entered this whirlwind of paradigm changes precisely to face an increasingly fierce competition in the cultural field. It has expanded its characteristics by also adopting methods of tourism, particularly from the experiential tourism and the emotional tourism, that are traveler/visitor-oriented so as to meet their cultural needs through the most sophisticated means of cultural mediation that incite curiosity and emotions, as well as to involve him/her in actions that will transform him/ her from spectator to actor. The relationship between the museum and tourism is relevant for the post-modern period, characterized by great mobility both nationally and especially internationally. The contemporary museum permanently adopts and creates means of heritage mediation. If tourism provides the traveler with a wide range of cultural destinations, the museum, through its events, tries to absorb as many tourists as possible. In this case the relationship between these two institutions becoming a symbiotic one, with benefits on both sides, but the main winner remains the traveler/visitor, who, if the museum has achieved its goal, leaves more cognitively and emotionally enriched, with the desire to return.