With origins in the 1800s, the National Museum of Denmark is looking to the future with OTA bookings growing faster than any of its other sales channels.
If you wanted to see everything inside the National Museum of Denmark, you’d have to walk six kilometers and take in 42,000 artifacts on display.
“We are actually the key to understanding Denmark,” says Jacob Frandsen, the museum’s Head of Sales and a 22-year veteran of the museum industry. “If you've never been to Denmark or Copenhagen before, you should actually start at the National Museum because you learn about the country and our culture.”
Welcoming an average of 450,000 guests a year, the National Museum of Denmark aims to reach 500,000 annual guests within the next two years. Jacob says they can easily attract domestic visitors, but they need OTAs to reach the international audience that would otherwise be out of reach given their limited budget.
Given Jacob's positive experience with GetYourGuide at his previous museum job, he got on the platform as one of his first steps when he started at the National Museum of Denmark in 2019.
The value of OTAs continues to show itself. From 2024 to 2025, visitors to the National Museum of Denmark from OTA channels grew by about 70% — a higher rate than the museum’s other sales channels.
Here, Jacob talks about steering the historic museum through modernity, attracting international visitors with GetYourGuide, and spreading the use of OTAs across Danish museums.
What is the museum's overall mission?
"History makes us understand the present." That is our mission, boiled down, because otherwise we are just a large collection of artifacts. If we don't use the artifacts and explain them, they don't really make any sense.
How are you keeping the museum top of mind for people visiting Copenhagen?
First of all, we use many different sales channels and have a lot of marketing efforts focused on international visitors. For example, we made a pop-up exhibition in the airport and used the metro for advertising. We collaborate a lot with our local DMO (Destination Marketing Organization).
How does GetYourGuide fit into your sales and marketing strategy?
It's still a small portion of our sales, but I can see the numbers are growing very fast — faster than most of our other sales channels. It fits in very well because we want to reach international visitors, and GetYourGuide helps us with that.
Do you have any guesses as to why GetYourGuide is growing faster than other sales channels for you?
Well, because they're good at their job. That is one of the main reasons. I've always enjoyed the cooperation.
Another reason is probably that GetYourGuide hasn't really been a big thing when it comes to tours and attractions in Denmark. Not many tours and attractions have used OTAs, but I can see more getting on board. That helps all of us.
If there are more suppliers on the platform, more people will use it.
Have you thought about adding more products to GetYourGuide?
I would love to have more products. The reason why we only have one is that we have a very old and outdated ticketing system. We work with GetYourGuide on a manual basis, and we have no connectivity. The only product I actually could sell was the entrance ticket because it's free sale, unlimited capacity.
We are looking into it, and hopefully we can get an API connection sometime in the future. Then I will be able to add more products, like guided tours. I’m constantly in contact with our IT department to figure out what to do because there's a lot of potential.
What other challenges are you facing in terms of getting more visitors?
The biggest problem is actually the price level in Copenhagen. Copenhagen has always been an expensive destination, but over the last couple of years, it's become even more expensive. Hotel prices are going up—the same with restaurants. Now we can see flight prices going up as well due to the crisis in Iran.
That leaves less and less for attractions and museums. You need to get here, you need to sleep, you need to eat, and you need to drink — but you don't need to go to the museum.
How are you handling these challenges?
A lot of it is out of my control. Going back to the different sales channels, they’re becoming more important. Walk-ins are going down, but online bookings are going up.
GetYourGuide is extremely important. GetYourGuide can reach an audience I can't reach myself. I always try to optimize the product page to keep it up to date.
When did you think, "Wow, we're really growing and on the right track”?
Going back to the OTAs, we've grown a lot since I started. It's fantastic to see because even though the numbers in general are not great at the museum at the moment, I can see the OTA numbers are just going up and up and up every year.
I looked at the numbers from 2024 compared to 2025, and our OTA channels — all of them — grew by about 70%. They are growing faster than all our other sales channels.
What has been the most surprising opportunity that's come from working with GetYourGuide?
The National Museum of Denmark is an umbrella organization with many different museums. We started expanding the cooperation, so we directed more museums to the GetYourGuide platform. They say the same as I do — that it's very easy to cooperate with GetYourGuide. We’re planning to expand even more, getting more museums online on GetYourGuide.
I used the National Museum of Denmark as a test, and it worked very well. I talked to the other museums, and they were willing to get on board, too. I think it took one or two years before the next one came online. We are a governmental institution, so we are not very fast.
At the moment, we have four museums online, almost five. Hopefully, just after the summer, we'll have six museums online.
What are some customer reviews that have stood out to you?
I often read GetYourGuide reviews, and people really like the museum, but many say the layout is confusing and it's hard to find your way around. We are testing some AI wayfinding tools to help.
Another thing people often say is that we need more languages at the museum. At the moment, it's in Danish and English, but we know that the Germans, French, Italians, Spanish, and Chinese want and need some help in their own language, so we are testing that.
What’s on the horizon for the museum?
We have a non-permanent exhibition about Vikings, but we are building a permanent exhibition focusing only on Vikings. It will open in 2028, maybe 2029. All of our international visitors want to hear about the Vikings.
Two years ago, we had a short period, only about three months, where we didn't have a Viking exhibition. People got very disappointed. I actually told the museum director that we can never run out of Vikings again, and he promised me we never will.
Key Takeaways
- Inspiring OTA success: The National Museum of Denmark’s proven success with GetYourGuide has motivated four other museums, and counting, within its umbrella organization to join the OTA platform.
- Welcoming more international visitors: Five to 10 years ago, the museum’s visitors were split about 50-50 between domestic and international. Now about 70% of its visitors are international, thanks in part to OTAs.
- Experiencing dramatic OTA growth: From 2024 to 2025, the number of the museum’s visitors from OTA channels grew by about 70%.
- Solving customer pain points: Based on feedback in GetYourGuide customer reviews, the museum is testing AI wayfinding tools to improve on-site navigation.
- Seeing value in small adjustments: The National Museum of Denmark has noticed an increase in sales after tweaking its GetYourGuide product description and photos.
