Consultants to the Visitor Attraction Sector
Immigration Museum,
Museums Victoria
The Immigration Museum occupies the former Customs House in central Melbourne and tells the stories of migration, culture and belonging that have shaped Victoria. In 2026 Museums Victoria asked Xcentuate to prepare a commercialisation strategy for the museum, running alongside but separate from a wider master-planning exercise for the site.
Commercial strategy
Immigration Museum in numbers:
130,000
ticketed visitors
a year
4
commercial models appraised
$620k to $1.2m
indicative annual commercial revenue range
Scope of work
Market assessment
Our team benchmarked the museum against local, interstate and international comparators, including recent single-site resets such as the Young V&A in London, to establish where mission-led commercial income is being grown and how. We reviewed programming and visitation data and carried out a site use analysis of the building and its city-centre setting, looking at the journey from the street to the galleries, café, shop and event spaces.
Workshops with the museum team
A series of workshops with Museums Victoria staff examined current commercial planning, revenue models, costs and operating constraints. These surfaced a clear picture: a strong building and civic identity, a varied events programme and an open-minded team, held back by an unwelcoming threshold, unclear brand expression and commercial lines that were owned and controlled outside the museum.
Options appraisal
Four models were tested, from incremental enhancement of the current arrangements through to a high-intensity, revenue-first approach. The appraisal weighed each against market positioning, visitation potential, revenue and operating implications, and the use of space between exhibitions, retail, food and beverage and events.
Recommendations
We recommended a phased, integrated commercial model rooted in the museum’s identity and the character of its building. The model has five connected parts: a reset of the entrance and welcome, a specialty café with a social-enterprise dimension, a staged retail offer growing from a compact range into a community gallery shop, museum-controlled venue hire with segmented pricing and firm ownership of customer relationships, and a programme of community-linked activation that keeps income generation visibly connected to the museum’s purpose.
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The strategy is built to be delivered in stages over about three years without large-scale capital works, so that it can move in step with master-planning decisions rather than pre-empt them. It is supported by a designated commercial lead, a draft role description and advisory panel framework, a risk register, a set of commercial, audience and mission indicators, and good, better and best revenue scenarios that show how the museum can roughly double its commercial income from the same ticketed audience by bringing more people into the building as café, retail and event customers.
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The strategy was delivered to Museums Victoria in May 2026.
