Bombshell At Coastal Defence Museum

Did anyone pay attention to the fact that the government issued a press release announcing the closure of the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence for one day because they found some explosives on a nearby slope?

No? It figures.

Would anyone notice if there were explosive figures uncovered at the Museum of Coastal Defence?

No? It figures.


According to the 2010/11 financial figures, the museum spent HK$14.21 million (US$1.82 million) and apparently gained revenue of HK$0.517 million (US$66,000) from attendance figures of 122,883.

Assuming the museum is open 365 days a year, that's an average of 336 people daily visiting the museum. No wait, the museum closes on Thursdays (except public holidays) and the first two days of CNY, so better cut the number of days open by, say, 50, to 315. So that makes it an average daily attendance of 390 people. Hmmm …


No wait, only HK$407,000 came from "admission and hiring" fees. Assuming these people paid the minimum HK$5 admission fee, that only makes 81,400 paid attendances. Therefore, using these figures (i.e. 81,400 people and 315 open days), there is an average daily attendance of 258 fee-paying people visiting the museum? Hmmm ...

But wait, let's be a bit more strict and use the maximum HK$10 admission. This would halve the average daily attendance of fee-paying people to 129. So even with this conservative estimate, would there be this many people, on average, visiting the Museum of Coastal Defence every day?

Why close the museum on account of discovering explosives? In fact, this incident should have been exploited to help increase visitor numbers. But then, this would assume that the museum's publicity department would have smart and skilled workers on their staff payroll. Which is a huge assumption.