The capital’s visitor attractions have fallen off the top of the UK’s most visited list for the first time since 2008.
New figures from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) show London is still recovering from the pandemic and lockdown with sites in the capital closed for an average of 148 days in 2021 compared to 81 days elsewhere in England.
Tate Modern, which was the country’s most visited attraction in 2020, was down to seventh place with 1.15 million visitors while the British Museum pulled in 1.32 million.
The most visited site in the UK was Windsor Great Park which had 5.4 million visitors as people flocked to outdoor attractions including Kew Gardens which was visited by 1.96 million people.
The most popular indoor attraction was the Natural History Museum which had 1.57 million visitors and its director Doug Gurr said the numbers were “phenomenal” in a year when the museum had been closed for five months.
He said: “It is testament to the hard work and resilience of all our staff who ensured visitors had the same world-class welcome and experience as well as the innovative public programme offering which included three temporary exhibitions: Our Broken Planet: How We Got Here and Ways to Fix It, Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature and Wildlife Photographer of the Year. We are grateful to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport for their much-needed ongoing support which enabled us to achieve these figures, this will remain critical as we continue our recovery.”
Among the hardest-hit sites in London was The Monument which saw visitor numbers fall by 67 per cent from 29,485 in 2020 to 9,804 in 2021.
ALVA director Bernard Donoghue said many venues which relied on overseas visitors were “still just surviving”.
He said: “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.”
He said the Government could help by allowing EU school and youth groups to travel to the UK with ID cards rather than passports and by overturning the decision to end tax-free shopping.
