PRESS card

My favorite one is to access different museums and cultural events either for free or getting a discount. I must confess, I am a museum lover: Every time I visit a new city, I have to see some museums. At least, the town/city museum, to learn about the local history, the most famous museum in town and the archeologic one, if there is one. Also, science museums, usually focused on children and families, have proven to be quite entertaining a great investment of my time when traveling. I already calculated it for writing this article, and in 2017, I saved almost 150 Euro by using my Press card.

So how do I do it? I simply approach the ticket officer at the museum I want to visit, show my Press card, and say that I am a journalist and that I usually get a discount in my entrance. Most of the times, according to my own experience, they offer a free entrance, which is very nice because it saves up to 15 Euro, depending on the museum you are visiting. It means that about 50% of the times I get to a museum, I pay nothing. For example, my very favorite museum in Vienna, the Albertina, offers free entrance to journalists. Also, in the Franz Kafka Museum in Prague, the Moravian Gallery and the Labyrinth, in Brno, Czech Republic, the Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Bled Castle in Slovenia and all city museums in Udine, Italy, among many others, journalists do not have to pay anything (See my article about Brno.)

About 20% of times, I am offered a reduced entrance price, as if I would be a student. It happens mostly on the fine art museums and treasuries in churches, which are a very nice opportunity to see relics and religious items and art, and to avoid tourist masses, because they are very rarely crowded. This is also not a bad deal, considering that it represents a saving of about 30-50% over the regular entrance price. That was the case when I visited the treasury located at Notre Dame, in Paris, where Jesus´ crown of thorns is shown to the public (See my article about Paris.). Also, at the Hohenwerfen Castle in Salzburg, Austria, I got a discount for my entrance: I paid 12,50 instead of 16,50 Euro for the elevator to the castle and entrance (See my article about Salzburg.)

30% of times, and mostly in private museums, they do not have any discount for journalists. Almost always they apologize to me for that, explaining that private museums only relay on the money coming from the tickets to keep the museum running, and it is also OK. For example, it happened to me recently, at the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, and at the San Severo Chapel in Naples, where the lady apologized to me twice, when I entered the museum exhibition and when I left the place.

But the deal must be two-sided: the journalist and the museums should win something. So every time I write about a museum in my Globetrotter article, and it gets published, I send an e-mail to thank the museum for the free entrance. I look into their website, where I always can find a contact person or a general email address. I write a nice email, including the link to my article, so they can see what I wrote about them. To wrap up my email, I encourage them to keep up with their free journalist policy.

This is what I did with my article about Bratislava, where I visited a wonderful natural science museum (link to the article HERE). I sent my e-mail and about one week later, I got a very nice email from the museum´s director, thanking me very warmly for what I have written. It really felt great!

So please, don’t be ashamed to ask for your free entrance or discount in a museum, they will never be rude at you, even if they have nothing to offer. You can save a lot of money, and on the other hand, you can help museums to get more visibility in the international tourism spectrum by writing about them in your article at Globetrotter Magazine.