Smell as a Value-Creating Element in Museum Services: A Qualitative Study of Professional and Prospective Visitor Perspectives

Museums increasingly employ multisensory approaches, and olfactory heritage scholarship has established smell as an interpretive and cultural medium; however, its relationship with perceived value and service experience remains underdeveloped. This study examines how olfactory stimuli are conceptualised, negotiated, and evaluated by museum professionals and prospective visitors, and identifies when they may contribute to museum experiences. Using a qualitative design, the study combined semi-structured interviews with nine museum professionals from diverse Slovenian museum contexts and a focus group with eight prospective visitors. The findings indicate that participants view scent’s value-creating potential not through sensory stimulation alone, but by supporting interpretation, evoking emotions and autobiographical memories, strengthening visitors’ sense of authenticity and immersion, and encouraging active engagement. Both groups prioritised narrative congruence, contextual appropriateness, visitor autonomy, and sensory moderation over pleasantness. Olfactory experiences were primarily associated with interpretive enrichment, perceived quality, and value during the visit, whereas anticipated effects on attendance and willingness to pay were limited. Several constraints to the value-creating potential were also discussed. The study conceptualises olfactory stimuli as strategically curated elements of interpretive service and proposes curator–visitor sensory alignment as a useful conceptual lens for examining how intended and perceived meanings may contribute to value creation.