UK attractions still lagging behind pre-Covid visitor numbers as tourists stay away

London’s British Museum and Natural History Museum are thriving – but most UK tourist attractions are lagging well behind pre-Covid visitor numbers. That is the conclusion from analysis by The Independent of last year’s numbers from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (Alva).

Total visitor numbers to 400 attractions are down 8.8 per cent compared with 2019 – meaning one in 11 tourists are staying away.

The English capital has a monopoly on the top 10 sights: all are in or very close to London.

The British Museum heads the table, with 6.48 million visitors, which is 4 per cent ahead of pre-Covid figures. The Natural History Museum drew 6.3 million visitors last year, a rise of one-sixth in five years.

In third place is Windsor Great Park at 5.67 million.

Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre, the V&A, the National Gallery, Somerset House, the Tower of London and the Science Museum complete the top 10.

The V&A South Kensington saw its busiest summer since 2018, welcoming more than one million visitors between July and September – thanks, in part, to the temporary Taylor Swift Songbook trail.

The director of Alva, Bernard Donoghue, told The Independent travel podcast: “We celebrate the fact that London is so popular and a must-see destination for the world. But it is a real challenge to get people out of London.

“That’s why we’ve been doing a lot of work with destination management organisations and local visitor economy partnerships to promote them as part of an itinerary to overseas visitors.”

Eleventh place is taken by the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The remainder of the top 20 are in either London or the Scottish capital, including Kew Gardens (12th) and Edinburgh Castle (15th).

Stonehenge in Wiltshire (21st) is the first non-capital attraction. Visitor numbers to the mysterious masonry circle are down 15 per cent compared with 2019.

The leading Scottish tourist attraction outside Edinburgh is the Riverside Museum in Glasgow at 24th. The transport and social history museum is doing slightly better than the average, being only 5 per cent down compared with 2019. But Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow has slipped from 25th to 27th, with a 35 per cent slide in visitors compared with pre-Covid numbers.

The head of museums and collections at charity Glasgow Life, Jane Rowlands, said: “Recent years’ visitor numbers at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum included very high attendances attracted by the exhibitions on Mary Quant and John Byrne. In 2024, the venue did not host an equivalent high-profile exhibition, focusing instead on a series of changes to displays in the main galleries.”

Mr Donoghue said that with average 3.2 per cent year-on-year growth across UK attractions, there was “room for optimism”.

He said: “If I was an economist, I’d say slow but steady growth.

“The cost of living crisis is still absolutely with us, so people are making really tactical choices very clearly about how they spend their leisure pounds and their leisure hours.

“It’s financially challenging to be a visitor attraction, but the real glimmer is that people are saying, ‘We’re still prioritising days out, and we’re still prioritising spending special time with special people in special places’, and that’s at visitor attractions.

“They may be sacrificing other things like takeaway meals or subscriptions to Netflix or whatever before they sacrifice day trips.”

The highest-rated attraction in Northern Ireland is Titanic Belfast, with a 10 per cent year-on-year rise in visitors taking it eight places higher to 35th.

Wales did not perform as well as the other three UK nations; St Fagan’s National Museum of History was the leading attraction, in 62nd place. It has lost one-fifth of its pre-Covid visitors.

The appeal of the UK to overseas tourists has been tempered by two post-Brexit policies:

The director of Alva said: “Not only were we saying to the world, we’re quite expensive to come here because we’ve got VAT at 20 per cent, we’ve got air passenger duty, we’ve got the looming prospect of ‘bed tax’ in different local authorities across the nation, and electronic travel authorisation, but we’re also the only European country that doesn’t have tax-free shopping.

“We’re having robust conversations with government about our international attractiveness as a destination around the world.

“If you wanted to get an economy up and running and recovering really quickly, you’d just make yourself utterly desirable to the rest of the world as a tourism destination.”

Last month, VisitBritain predicted revenue from overseas tourists will be 9 per cent down in 2025 compared with 2019.