Pitch

Our research began with the decision of which project to monitor, initially undecided between funds allocated to the Church of San Giuseppe or funds allocated to the Whitaker Museum to enhance the museum visit. After careful research, we decided to monitor the project on Mozia, as it is an island in our lagoon, very close to us, and we could investigate by also conducting a site visit to see with our own eyes if any modifications had been made to the museum.

The island continues to generate historical and tourist interest, supported by significant investments, such as those from the Whitaker Foundation, which received funding from the ERDF for the enhancement of cultural heritage and the Whitaker Museum. From May 9, 2023, we, the students of Class III C at the Liceo Classico of Marsala, have been monitoring the project, analyzing the trend of payments, the influx of tourists, and the correlation between air traffic at Birgi Airport and visits to the museum. Despite a significant decrease in airport passengers from 2018 to 2020, the number of museum visitors has not decreased proportionally, suggesting that the museum also attracts local and school visitors regardless of air traffic. Moreover, the pandemic crisis of 2020 did not completely stop the tourist flow during the summer; further analysis suggests that there is no direct correlation between overnight stays in Marsala's hotels and museum visits, indicating that museum visitors may not necessarily stay in the city but may visit just in passing. From this data analysis, it emerged that despite the pandemic in 2020, Mozia continued to attract tourists during the summer in a reduced manner.

We have observed through analysis and interviews that the Mozia museum is visited mostly by local students. Therefore, we support the idea of the Whitaker Museum setting up a multipurpose classroom for students and tourists, in order to inform the public about the history of the island.

The data collection was carried out as follows:
-Data collection at the chamber of commerce, using the INSTAT website, we collected the number of tourists who stayed in Marsala and the museum’s income. (As written in our first report)
-An interview with the museum manager, which enabled us to interpret the data collected previously and gave us an explanation of the nature of the project. He also explained the difficulties of the museum on which we based our proposals  
-Finally, we interviewed students from our school, professors and school staff about the museum as they represent the largest audience. We collected complaints and positive remarks from the respondents, who in the vast majority of cases had already visited the museum.

Our proposals to improve the project and make it to effective are the following: publize more the museum on social media, (e.g. tik tok, instagram, X). This could help to attract more people and increase the visitors. We suggest to open a bilingual account, in a such way that it could reach not only potential italian turist, but also foreigners potential tourist. Furthermore we reccomend the museum to develop its collaboration with schools, in particular with high schools. Indeed if the museum organized more projects that involve students in PCTO activities, it would bring more people into visiting Mozia, making the multimedia room more used. Moreover the students would help working; and they would learn  to use the equipmentacquiring new language skills talking with foreign visitors.