An entrepreneur who wants to establish a visitor center has a big vision and dreams and ambitions, and that's fine.
According to the promoters - the visitor center must have such an impact on the visitor, to such an extent that when he leaves the visit - he will be a new person: he will finally understand how important..... the trees / the values of my venture / the cave of the multiplication / my connection to the heritage / preservation About the environment / Jerusalem .... and more and more.
A completely true story (the names are kept in the system..): A few years ago I was asked to come to a meeting with two young entrepreneurs - and I quote:
"Yankela, we have an unlimited budget and we want you to produce an expensive film that will bring the Messiah!"
I answered: I thank you for the great trust in me, but unfortunately it is not realistic. Perhaps it is possible to produce a film that will bring the viewers closer to the consciousness and understanding of what the story of the Messiah is.' its Yes.
and back to the visitor centers.
The entrepreneur has a dream, that whoever goes through the experience in the new center will finally realize that he was wrong about this and that, and then he will change his approach to the subject.
This is usually not realistic either. Different people have different opinions and different worldviews, and no visit or experience, however good, will change their opinion. So what?
When we sit down to plan the center's program, or in other words the total content and experiences that the visitors will go through, the most we can get the visitors to say is: "Wala".
Well - until now I thought this way and that way (about the environment, about the settlers, about the electric company, about the Wall and the Temple, about children with special needs, about the blind, about Tnuva or Osem), and now I understand that there is also another world and I am ready to think about it.
For me - the success of a visitor center will be a result where the visitor will say when he leaves - voila, there is something here that I did not know and is worth thinking about.
But in order for the visitor to say wow - we must provide him with a meaningful experience that consists of countless details of design, flow, emotion, fun, knowledge and more.
If a visitor leaves our center at the end of the visit and says - it was great! Or even - it was good! - It's a failure. If the visitor says on the way out - "It was important" - it is even more worrying for me, because it means that even before he went through the experience we designed for him, he already thought our topic was important, and that's fine too.
Last year I visited one of the well-known visitor centers, and I asked the manager of the place what the visitors' reactions were when they finished the visit. Management's answer: Most visitors think the place is very interesting.
In my eyes, such an answer is no less than a failure! After the founders of the center invested well over 10 million NIS in the place - is this the lukewarm response?
The real success of a visitor center is when those who leave it say: Wow. Stunning. Walla.
When we invest so much money in building a visitor center, and it doesn't matter if it was NIS 1 million or NIS 15 million, for me there is only one desirable and possible result - Wow.
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