Proposal for a Technological Thematic Concept for the Trays Festival Museum

The experience economy has challenged museums to rethink their mission, as traditional cultural institutions when confronted with new forms of tourism consumption. As tourists demand more authentic experiences, co-creation has allowed tourists to engage pragmatically with tangible and intangible heritage and museum exhibitions reframing how curation, museology-related content, and technology are present in fourth-generation museums. The Trays Festival (TF) is an internationally recognized community-based event which attracts more than six hundred thousand people every four years to the Portuguese city of Tomar. Dating back to the thirteenth century, this secular and sacred event includes the adornment of trays, houses and streets, paper flowers, bread and wheat spikes, typical elements of ancient festivals of crops. As the festival represents a fertile ground for the use of local creativity, a TF Museum could function as a way to promote sustainable development in the city fostering distinction among traditional cultural tourism destinations. The authors developed a literature review on the variables of the study and analyzed recent technological and marketing strategies for museums. As part of ongoing research, this paper has the goal to present a technological and thematic proposal for the development of a TF community-based museum in the city of Tomar, embedded in technology, creativity, and authentic tourism experiences. We believe that such a proposal could help to tackle seasonality in the destination by promoting a continuous offer around the TF.