National Museum gets rid of paper tickets to save visitor's time

China's National Museum announced on its official Weibo account that visitors no longer need to use paper admission tickets. Visitors can instead swipe their ID cards or another ID certificate to enter.

The National Museum of China on November 24, 2017. [Photo: IC]

Since the National Museum reopened to the public after an expansion in March 2012, it has been offering free exhibitions but still tickets are needed. People can order their tickets at the entrance, or book them on the website in advance and collect them at the entrance. However, this traditional ticket collecting takes time and usually cause long queues outside the museum.

Visitors had complained about the amount of time they had to queue to enter the Museum, first queuing to collect their paper entrance ticket, then for the security check, and again for the bag storage counter.

The move to get rid of paper tickets follows the move of the Palace Museum, more commonly known as the Forbidden City, to ditch paper tickets late last year.

Over the past year, the National Museum received 8 million visitors in 312 days, equal to 26,000 visitors per day. Visitors spent around 400 hours lining up to collect paper tickets during the year, according to Museum statistics. The Museum says that there is no limit on the number of visitors who will be admitted each day.

Some visitors reportedly miss the paper tickets, saying they used to collect them to remember their visit.