One Ticket, Many Feelings
The Louvre is dealing with an alleged ticket-fraud scheme in which two Chinese tour guides brought groups of tourists into the museum by reusing the same tickets for different visitors, according to the Associated Press. The report says museum employees may also have helped.
It is a creative approach to capacity management: instead of limiting the number of people who enter, simply let the same admission document experience reincarnation.
The Art of the Turnstile
Museums depend on tickets to control crowds, count visitors and collect admission revenue. A ticket that is scanned once and then passed around like a family heirloom is less an admission system than a tiny paper-based shell game.
The allegations do not mean every tour guide or museum worker was involved. They do mean that the world’s most famous museum has apparently encountered a fraud technique familiar to concert venues, parking lots and every person who has ever been told a screenshot counts as a ticket.
The Bottom Line
The Louvre has plenty of masterpieces. It may now add “the same barcode doing multiple shifts” to the collection. The Mona Lisa can keep smiling; the ticket scanner probably needs a security review.
Source
Associated Press: Fraud is ‘inevitable’ at a museum the size of the Louvre, official says