March 18th - Reviving UK tourism: Insights and innovations
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's podcast, Bernard Donoghue, director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, highlighted the ongoing recovery of the UK's visitor attractions and the need to bridge the remaining gap from pre-Covid levels. We explore the detrimental policy changes affecting European visitors and the push for fiscal incentives to boost the sector, underscoring the shift towards more engaging and immersive visitor experiences.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. |
| 0:09.6 | The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions has revealed today a remarkable survey of how |
| 0:17.9 | the key attractions that lure tourists from home and abroad are performing. |
| 0:24.0 | And there's some really interesting numbers there and trends in which I would like to |
| 0:29.3 | dig down with the help of the chief executive of the association, Bernard Donoghue. |
| 0:35.8 | Hello, Bernard. |
| 0:37.1 | Hi, Simon. Good to be here. Well, look, very |
| 0:40.7 | positive news. Talk us through what the highlights are for you, if you could. The highlights are |
| 0:47.4 | that we're still getting really good growth, really good recovery post-lockdown. Visitor attractions |
| 0:53.7 | are doing really well. We're still not back up to pre-COVID |
| 0:58.0 | levels of visitors, either domestic or overseas, so there is a bit of a gap. So we're down about 11% compared to 2019. |
| 1:07.0 | The other thing that I take from the survey, and we get all of our members providing the visitor numbers for the calendar year 2023, is that two things really. |
| 1:18.6 | One, people are keeping up their memberships of whether it's the National Trust or English Heritage or individual attractions to the same level that they were back in 2019. |
| 1:29.3 | And I find that really heartening. |
| 1:31.3 | So people are still prioritising going out on day trips, even in the cost of living crisis. |
| 1:37.3 | But we are seeing a kind of polarised economy. |
| 1:41.3 | Some people spending a lot at theatre, museums and galleries, and a lot of |
| 1:46.5 | visitor attractions providing either free tickets or £1 tickets or £2 tickets for people on |
| 1:53.6 | universal credit or pensions benefit who otherwise wouldn't be able or could afford to go. So |
| 1:59.4 | good strength, good recovery, not there yet, but also |
| 2:03.7 | indications of a polarised economy. And also it looks as though people are much more interested in |
| 2:10.5 | immersive experiences than, well, bluntly, looking at stuff hung on the walls. |
... |
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