The Jerónimos Monastery and the National Archaeological Museum in Lisbon now have automatic ticket offices, according to the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage (DGPC).
These two services under the supervision of the DGPC will be the first to have entrance tickets sold through five automatic ticketing machines, installed in the entrance lobby of the National Museum of Archeology, which operates in the monastery building.
This new system “will then be extended to museums, palaces and monuments with higher revenue, at a stage after this experimental period,” according to a statement from the DGPC, released on Tuesday.
The automatic machines accept payment with cash and also with credit and debit cards, whose use the Ministry of Culture intends to encourage.
Reducing queues at ticket offices, better management of human resources, greater security and strict control of revenues are some of the advantages that the DGPC intends to achieve with this system.
The tickets cover the different typologies in force, including legally prescribed discounts such as students, seniors and children.
In October, a three-day strike convened by the Union of Workers in Public and Social Functions of the South and Autonomous Regions obtained full membership of the workers at Jerónimos, National Archaeological Museum and Torre de Belém, where there are daily long queues of visitors to the input.
The workers complained of their inability to give vent to the influx of visitors, lack of working conditions and exhaustion.
According to the DGPC, to anticipate the start-up of automatic ticketing at the National Archaeological Museum and the Jeronimos Monastery, specific training events will take place this week with the officials involved.
The officials who will control the entries in the monuments will invite the visitors covered by reduced ticket to do documentary evidence of this condition, indicates the DGPC.
“The introduction to national monuments, palaces and museums of this new and modern ticketing system reproduces a practice that has already been successfully tested on various cultural facilities in Europe”, the DGPC said in the statement.
