Museums are among the best places in Florida to host a photo booth, and we want more museums and attractions in our upcoming install batches. A museum photo booth from SmileMore costs your institution nothing. Our team handles setup, keeps an eye on it from afar and swaps in fresh paper. Your finance office then receives a monthly payout with an itemized report. Visitors pay per session, and every strip leaves the building with your name printed on it.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. Here’s why.
The jellyfish museum that changed our thinking
Our founder, Thomas Steckman, has walked into a lot of venues with a pitch. The strangest by far was a jellyfish museum. At first, he expected an odd fit. Instead, he walked out convinced that museums belonged near the top of the list.
The logic is simple. People visit a museum to remember something. Indeed, they already photograph every tank, sculpture and dinosaur skull. Yet those photos sink into a camera roll with thousands of others. A printed strip, on the other hand, ends up on a fridge, in a scrapbook or tucked inside a passport case.
To be fair, not every museum agrees. For example, a science museum told us no. We haven’t written it off, though, because timing changes, and so do budgets and floor plans.
Gift-shop logic: a souvenir with no inventory
Think about how a gift shop works. You buy stock up front, you guess what will sell, and you mark down whatever doesn’t. Meanwhile, storage and shrink chip away at the margin.
A booth, by contrast, flips all of that. There’s nothing to buy and nothing to store, so nothing goes unsold. Each strip prints on demand, the visitor pays for it, and your name rides home with them.
| Magnets and postcards | Plush and apparel | SmileMore photo strip | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront inventory cost to you | Yes | Yes | None |
| Risk of unsold stock | Some | High (sizes, seasons) | None, it prints on demand |
| Shows the visitor themselves | No | No | Yes |
| Carries your name home | Usually | Usually | Yes, on every strip |
| Staff time | Restocking, register | Restocking, folding, register | None |
We’d argue the strip is the most personal souvenir in your building. A magnet says you visited. A strip, however, shows who you visited with.
If you run a museum, aquarium or attraction in South Florida, our partner program page explains what hosting involves.
A museum photo booth that looks like part of the visit
The cabinet is wrapped in artwork built around your brand, and your institution’s name runs along every strip. For a museum, that means the booth can feel like part of the experience rather than a machine parked by the restrooms. So we design the wrap with you before install, and it can echo a signature collection, a mascot or the building itself.
Still, placement matters as much as design. Our favorite spot sits on the path out, near the gift shop or the exit lobby. Visitors have just finished the experience, and they want a way to keep it.
Logistics are light, too. Plan on a patch of floor about five feet by five, a power outlet within reach, and any standard door for the cabinet to roll through. Also, no staff member ever has to run it.
School groups, tourists and rainy Saturdays
Florida museums serve wildly different crowds in a single week. Weekdays bring school groups. Then weekends bring families. Then tourists show up all year, since VISIT FLORIDA’s preliminary estimate put 2025 at a record 143.3 million visitors, and roughly 2.9 million of them were Canadian.
Weather also pushes people your way. Rain changes plans fast here, and an indoor attraction is the obvious backup. In short, a rainy Saturday is your Saturday.
School groups deserve a note of their own. A class moves as a herd, and the booth handles that well. Kids squeeze in four or five at a time, while each session wraps up in about 90 seconds. So a chaperone can rotate small groups through while everyone else browses the gift shop.
Two strips per session help here, too. One goes home with the student, while the other can go on a classroom wall.
After-hours events and private rentals
Museums host galas, member nights, weddings and corporate dinners. For those nights, an event client can book the booth outright, and your museum earns a share of that booking.
Thomas still works evening events himself. For three years running, he has worked the booth at an annual awards gala held inside a Hollywood, Florida hotel. So he knows how these nights flow: people dress up, the room loosens after dinner, and everybody suddenly wants a picture with everybody.
Galas need floor space, of course. If a dinner or a traveling exhibit needs that corner for a night, tell us the date and our crew shifts the booth out of the way.
Give your visitors a souvenir with their own faces on it
Tell us about your lobby, your hours and your busiest seasons. We’ll sketch a wrap that fits your collection and tell you plainly whether the spot works.
What our first live booth taught us
Our NSU booth greets students just inside Don Taft University Center on the Davie campus, dressed in Sharks blue. It opened in August 2026, and students kept it busy from the start: its first thirty days brought in north of three hundred paid sessions, most of them priced at $7.99.
Of course, those numbers come with context. A campus isn’t a museum, and move-in week drove much of the volume. Also, no machine runs perfectly forever, so we won’t promise you flawless uptime. Instead, we promise remote monitoring and repairs that are always our job.
Two other findings carry straight over to a museum lobby. First, the compliments center on sharp photos and fast prints, and “simple” is the word students reach for. Second, people keep asking whether it’s permanent, and they get visibly excited when we say yes.
Then there’s the monthly giveaway. Through the SmileMore Challenge, anyone who shares their strip online, tagging your museum plus SmileMore, gets a shot at that month’s prize. Every entry is a genuine visitor post naming your institution, which no ad budget can fake.
Finally, timing deserves candor too. Booths roll out in scheduled groups, and the next open slot may sit a few months away. If you’d like a museum photo booth in place before snowbird season or spring break, get on the list now. Hotels near you are asking similar questions, as our piece on Florida hotel amenities shows. And for the day itself, read our install day walkthrough.
Frequently asked questions
Will a booth feel out of place next to our exhibits?
Not if we design it with you. The wrap carries your colors, logo and name, and we usually place it on the way out rather than inside a gallery. If we can’t find a spot that respects your exhibits, we’ll say so.
Can the booth move when a traveling exhibit or gala needs the floor?
Yes. Give us a heads-up on the date, and our crew wheels it aside and back again afterward. Your facilities team never pushes anything.
Do school groups need a staff member to run it?
No. The booth never needs staff, and the touchscreen steps are short and plain. Chaperones just point the kids at it and stand back.
Does a museum photo booth make sense for a small attraction?
It can, because size matters less than steady visitors. If there’s a five-foot square of floor near your exit and an outlet within reach, we’ll look at your traffic and hours and give you a straight answer.
Picture closing time on a Sunday. A family from Ontario walks out past your front desk, arguing over who keeps the second strip. The winner tucks it into a passport case, and your museum’s name flies home with them. If you want that scene in your lobby, see if your museum qualifies.
