Museum sees increase in visitors

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a recent storm that damaged a storage building, Mesalands Dinosaur Museum director Loni Monahan is smiling pretty broadly these days.

That's because the museum saw a record-breaking number of visitors and revenue this year despite several months still remaining in calendar 2021.

Since the museum reopened March 1, Monahan said the museum has averaged 200 visitors a day on Fridays and Saturdays - its busiest days - and 150 visitors each day it was open.

"What we did in five months was more than we did in all of 2019 ... like 40% more," she said Thursday in her museum office. "Our visitation numbers doubled. We had all three of our parking lots full. It was wild."

Monahan said she compared this year's numbers to pre-pandemic 2019. She considered 2020 to be a "lost" year because of months of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Average revenue per museum visitor, which includes admission fees and gift-shop sales, rose to about $35 during the summer, she said. That compares to $11.50 two years ago.

Monahan said boosting the museum's visitor and revenue numbers was a multi-pronged effort.

"Our marketing has finally paid off," she said. "We marketed very hard with social media; we've had more than 100,000 people at our Facebook page this past year."

She also credited new billboards along the Interstate 40 corridor she designed. She said she kept the look simple: the name of the museum, an image of a dinosaur and the exit number.

Monahan said the museum's previous billboards "had too much information on them. Nothing stuck."

She freshened up the gift shop by repainting it and rearranging shelving. Most importantly, she updated its inventory.

"We had carried the same inventory year after year. It wasn't selling, and it was dated," she said. "I was thinking, 'What would my sons buy? What would my neighbors buy? What would the townspeople want to buy?'"

As an example of making merchandise more broadly appealing, Monahan said she uses a T-shirt vendor that supplies basic black, gray or navy blue shirts with few graphics. The shirts carry a basic image of a T. rex and come with whimsical messages such as "Party Like You're Going Extinct" and "Licensed to Carry Small Arms."

As a result of brisk sales, Monahan said the shop's shelves were emptied twice this summer.

She said pent-up demand and many more tourists taking driving vacations instead of flying this summer also were big factors in the museum's tourism surges. Several Tucumcari motel owners made similar observations.

"We can't take all the credit; it just worked out," she said. "People just want to buy, have saved for a year and want to spend money on their kids."

The strong summer business takes away some of the sting of an Aug. 28 severe storm that ripped the roof from the museum's nearby storage building on Adams Street.

A tarp has been placed over the building to keep the rain out, but museum curator Axel Hungerbuehler said Thursday the college's insurance adjuster said it likely is a total loss because of cracks in the cinder-block walls that run from top to bottom.

Hungerbuehler said a vinyl-cutting machine stored in the building also is likely a total loss because of rain that fell inside the building after its roof was gone, as are wooden shelves and cabinets.

He said some fossil and mineral specimens were kept in cardboard boxes in the building and would have to be sorted in the coming days to see whether any were damaged.

In the meantime, Monahan said she's ordered cabinets and glass for a new display of petrified wood from the museum's collection. She anticipates that will be ready by spring.

Because of the robust business, she said the museum is held with higher regard by the college's administrators.

"Because revenues have gone up, we're not the stepchild anymore," she said. "The school is recognizing the value of the museum, and we're getting what we ask for now. Now, we're part of the team."