The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) has released the 2021 visitor figures of its members, revealing a demand for outdoor attractions such as gardens, parks and zoos.
The total number of visits to ALVA’s sites in 2021 was 67.8 million, which was a 25 percent increase on the previous year. However, attendance at the top 306 ALVA sites in 2019 was 156.6 million.
“These figures, in a unique year, show that tourism was hit first and hit hardest by the consequences of Covid and that there is a huge spectrum of those attractions, mostly outdoors, which are recovering well, but still many, mostly those which are usually heavily dependent on overseas visitors, which are still just surviving,” said Bernard Donoghue, director of ALVA.
“Overseas visitors to the UK are not likely to be back to pre-pandemic levels until 2024/2025 so for many of our most iconic attractions this means not getting back to financial resilience for four or five years after having first closed their doors.”
Since 2020, Scotland has enjoyed a 45 percent rise in attendance. Compared to other areas of England, London saw the weakest year-on-year performance. This is due to sites in the city being closed for more days than other areas in 2021.
Total visits to ALVA sites was 67.8 million
Venues that are primarily outdoors welcomed just 17 percent fewer visitors in 2021 than in 2019, whereas attendance at museums and cultural institutions was 73 percent down on pre-pandemic levels.
For the first time, the most visited attraction was an outdoor site, and it wasn’t in London. New member Windsor Great Park attracted 5.4 million visitors, and was followed by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which welcomed 1,963,171 guests.
Chester Zoo was in third place with 1,601,327 visits. It was followed by London’s Natural History Museum in fourth place (1,571,413 visits) and RHS Garden Wisley in fifth place (1,410,785 visits).
After the Natural History Museum, the British Museum was the second most visited indoor venue in the UK in 2021 with 1,327,120 guests. This was followed by Tate Modern, which attracted 1,156,037 people.
Beamish, The Living Museum of the North enjoyed one of the most significant increases of 95 percent, while Chatsworth saw an increase of 94 percent.
Images: Kew/NHM
