Attendance to UK attractions is still lower than pre-pandemic times, the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) has revealed.
ALVA has released the visitor figures of its members for 2024, reporting a total 157.2 million visits to 400 of its sites last year – a 3.4 percent increase on the previous year.
However, attendance is still lower than it was before the pandemic, with the total number of visits to ALVA sites in 2024 down 8.8 percent on the 169.7 million visits in 2019.
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The UK’s most-visited attraction in 2024 was the British Museum, which welcomed 6,479,952 visitors with an 11 percent increase on 2023 numbers.
In second place was the Natural History Museum, which also experienced an 11 percent rise in visitors to 6,301,972.
In third place (and the most-visited outdoor attraction) was Windsor Great Park, which welcomed 5,670,430 visitors and enjoyed a 3 percent increase in attendance.
This was attributed to the new Adventure Play attraction by Creating Adventurous Places (CAP.Co), the adventure play specialist.
Steady growth for UK visitor attractions
In fourth place was Tate Modern with 4,603,025 visits, and in fifth place was the Southbank Centre with a 17 percent increase to 3,734,075 visitors.
Bernard Donoghue, director of ALVA, said: “For most visitor attractions 2024 was a year of steady but not significant growth.”
Last year was “a financially changing year for visitor attractions” due to factors like the cost of living crisis, increasing business costs and modest international visitors to the UK, he added.
“The increased National Insurance costs and the decrease in the Employment Allowance threshold, plus raising the rate of national minimum wage, have effectively wiped out planned surpluses for many attractions or derailed their investment plans, and for some, these unbudgeted, unanticipated costs will result in cuts and job losses,” said Donoghue.
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Outside of England, Titanic Belfast was the most-visited attraction in Northern Ireland with a 10 percent increase to 881,573 visitors.
In Wales, the most-visited attraction was St. Fagan’s National Museum of History with 600,690 visits (62nd place).
In Scotland, the top spot was claimed by the National Museum of Scotland, which saw a 6 percent increase to 2,314,974 visitors.
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