Write about the following topic:

Many museums charge for admission while others are free.

Do you think the advantages of charging people for admission to museums outweigh the disadvantages?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

You should write at least 250 words.

Sample Answer 1:
A museum is an entity that preserves the artifacts of history and works as an important representative of a nation’s tradition and culture. Thus the importance of museums to convey the historical facts to the new generation is beyond controversy. However, there are scopes to discuss whether entry to a museum should be free or not. I personally believe that there should be no charge for the museum entry as charging people for that have more demerits.

To begin with, ticket money for museum entrance discourages many students and low-income families to visit them. The collection of large museums increases day by day and thus people need to visit museums on a regular basis, not just once in a lifetime. When people need to spend money to witness history, many of them prefer going to movies instead. Furthermore, museums are mostly run by state funds and like public parks, sea beaches and libraries, they should be free of cost. The main reason museums get public funds is to convey the national history to the young people and to act as a national pride, not to earn from ticket money. From this regards, charging people for visiting museums have far more demerits than an ignorable advantage it offers.

Proponents of museum entrance fee believe that the ticket money is necessary for its maintenance while they fail to realise that this cost could easily be covered by the tax payers’ money. Charging these people and their children again is unrealistic. Finally, free entry to the museum would attract more international visitors and spread the cultural uniqueness to the world and thus bring more tourists to a country. If there are charges, tourists would visit more popular places than the museums.

To conclude, free entrance to museums have numerous long terms and immediate benefits that far outweigh the single monetary advantage ticket money system has.

Sample Answer 2:
Nowadays, many tourist attractions are present globally which are offered and promoted by the government and one of them is the museum. Museums also preserve and represent the history, traditions and many other important aspects of a country. In some museums, there is a policy that the visitors have to pay money before entering while others are free to visit. I certainly believe that the applied policy i.e. charging visitors for museum entrance derives more benefits than drawbacks.

First and foremost, money collected from the visitors can be utilised to maintain and develop the museum. For instance, it can be used to cover the utility bills, repairing costs, renovation and staff costs. Maintaining a large museum costs a huge amount of money and the revenue earned from the visitors could be a good source of money to do that. Not all museums are funded by the government and sometimes museum‘s fund is not enough to cover all the costs it requires. If no money is taken from visitors, such museums would have to be shut down.  So admission fee in museums seems very utilitarian to maintain a better museum.

Furthermore, due to applied tariff, inhabitants who enter a place providing scientific or historical values are likely to spend their leisure time there and do not enter unnecessarily. For example my sister, Lia tends to read carefully the available information provided in the museum and one of the reasons she does that because she wants to get some value from the money she spent. This example makes clear that admission money is seemly very utilitarian to encourage and educate the visitors to use facilities offered maximally.

On the other hand, entrance fee in museums possibly reduce the guests because most of the people prefer to come to places and spend idle time that can be entered without any money. To illustrate, a garden located in the city gets more visitors than the other amusement parks which require a ticket to enter. The people in the garden go to walk, gossip and to chat with others which should not be the case in a museum. Only interested and real visitors in a museum would make it a better place for people to learn and visit.

To conclude, although admission charge will attract fewer visitors in a museum in many cases, considering the purpose of a nice museum and to cover the expenses it requires, the entry fees seem to have more advantages than the drawbacks. 

[ Written by – Izzah Raisya ]