After the increase in the electricity bill by 10% in 2024 and the price of the Paris metro ticket during the Olympic Games, it is the turn of the Louvre to announce, Friday December 8, a record increase in its ticket , which will increase from 17 euros to 22 euros from January 15, 2024. An increase of 30%.
The Parisian museum is aligned with the estate of Versailles, whose entry price will discreetly increase in January from 19.50 euros to 21 euros. It is also similar to the pricing of American museums, such as the MoMA (26 euros) or the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim (28 euros) in New York.
To justify this increase, the Louvre cites inflation in energy costs, which is added to the desire to regulate visitor flows. In short, you have to find money, without compromising the comfort of the visit. A complicated equation when revenue linked to ticketing, of the order of 76.5 million euros in 2022, has not returned to pre-Covid-19 levels, despite attendance increasing by one million visitors.
8.7 million visitors in 2023
This measure will mainly affect foreign tourists, who represent two thirds of the approximately 8.7 million admissions to the museum in 2023. But the Louvre is betting that they will not hesitate to come and admire The Mona Lisa Or The Victory of Samothrace, whatever the cost. On the other hand, the measure should further deter the French, hit by inflation and overwhelmed by the queues in front of the Pyramid, even if the museum claims that it is completely free for job seekers, the disabled or students. Many categories, however, do not benefit from this privilege, the establishment having stopped in 2014 a flagship measure of cultural democratization, free access to its collections on the first Sundays of the month.
When it was inaugurated in 1793, the Louvre had free access as its founding principle. But for a century, the injunctions of public authorities to increase its own resources have led it to revise its policy. The entry ticket, which cost around 3 euros in 1983, actually reached 17 euros in 2017. In light of this evolution, the vacation rental platform Holidu estimates that at this rate, the price of entry will reach… 72 euros in 2050.
The barrier to affordable pricing has been broken in museums
For some time now, the barrier to affordable pricing has been lifted in French museums. Evoking the impact of the pandemic on the cultural world, Senator Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains) highlighted in 2021 in a report from the Finance Committee that “the hypothesis of a change in post-Covid cultural habits must in fact encourage a reassessment of the price of tickets to access certain public rooms, such as the Paris Opera”.
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