Visitor numbers to Britain’s most popular tourist attractions, including the British Museum and Tate Modern, have failed to rebound since the start of the pandemic, as the cost of living crisis and a lack of Chinese tourists have driven demand.
There were 123.4 million visits recorded at the 349 most popular tourist sites in the UK last year, an increase on 2021 but still less than the 161.2 million visits to these sites in 2019, according to the Association of Major Tourist Attractions, the industry body, on Friday . .
Bernard Donoghue, ALVA’s chief executive, said the London landmark had been slow to recover because it was “too dependent on foreign visitors” and as a result “suffered from prolonged Covid-like tourism”.
In 2022, 46.6 million visits were recorded to the capital’s biggest tourist attractions, a 33 percent drop on the level recorded before the pandemic.
Visits to the British Museum, previously the UK’s most popular attraction, are around 35 per cent cheaper, while trips to the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum are up more than 40 per cent compared to 2019.
Windsor Great Park ranks as the most popular visitor attraction with 5.6 million visits in 2022, driven by the crowds that gather to watch the state hearse carrying Queen Elizabeth II to her final resting place at the King George VI Memorial Chapel in September.
Donoghue said that since the end of Beijing’s Zero-Covid policy last December, marking the lifting of China’s travel ban, the prospect of international visitors has increased “week by week”.
“Chinese visitors are not only important in terms of numbers, but they also spend more,” Donoghue said.
According to tourism board VisitBritain, annual spending by international visitors to the UK is set to reach almost £29.5bn this year, surpassing the previous record of £28.4bn set in 2019, but visitor numbers are not expected to rebound until 2025.
Donoghue added that the cost of living crisis meant Britons were making “tactical decisions” about their leisure spending, which reduced many sites.
Visits to free attractions recovered to 14 percent below 2019 levels, and rebounded faster than paid sites, whose numbers dropped by 28 percent.
Dan Wolfe, commercial director of Historic Royal Palaces, a charity that runs six British palaces, including the Tower of London, said the recovery in the number of tourists has been “led by the American return en masse”.
In addition to slow demand from visitors from China and southeast Asia, Wolfe said the Tower of London has seen a decline in visitors from European countries.
“The question mark is whether Covid is masking the effects of Brexit,” Wolfe said, pointing out that more bureaucratic hurdles for school tours visiting the UK are driving demand.
Tim Reeve, the V&A’s deputy director, said that, while the museum had benefited from record domestic visitor numbers, a drop in international visitors had dampened demand.
“We know that it will be some time before international tourism reaches pre-pandemic levels,” Reeve said.