RHS Wisley the seventh most visited attraction in the UK last year despite 20% fall in visitors
Despite a 20% fall in vistors, RHS Wisley was the seventh most visited attraction nationally in 2020...
Visitor attractions across the county recorded massive falls in admissions last year due to the effects of the pandemic, with the National Trust's Polesden Lacey seeing a 27% decrease.
The Bookham, Surrey venue had less than 295,000 through its gates throughout 2020.
Despite having a total of nearly 1 million people walk around the RHS Wisley over the same period, this represented a 20% drop from the previous year.
Hampton Court Palace, which lies just across the border from Elmbridge, had a downturn of almost 80% compared to 2019. They only welcomed 222,447 guests.
The statistics come from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA).
They calculated a 66% plummet in the number of people visiting attraction sites in the UK last year.
The ALVA explained that although every attraction was forced to close in the initial lockdown, by early summer last year the situation became far more nuanced.
Some outdoor sites reopened far earlier than was the case for indoor sites.
Further restrictions often applied to individual nations or English regions rather than the entire UK, meaning that the impact of Covid-19 restrictions was decidedly uneven.
Unlike previous years, not all the Top 10 most visited attractions were in London and for the first time ever, two gardens appeared in the top 10, one of which was Wisley.
Despite the reduction in visitors, the Surrey site still managed to jump 21 places up the seventh.
Director of ALVA, Bernard Donoghue said: “Our figures for 2020 reflect what a devastatingly hard year the attractions sector and the wider visitor economy faced.
"Tourism is the UK’s 5th biggest industry and as these figures show, was hit first, hit hardest and will take the longest to recover.”
"Easter is one of the economically important times for our members.
"We continue to question the government’s decision to open non-essential retail but not indoor attractions, who will also miss the May Bank Holiday as well.
"In the past 14 months most our members have been closed for every bank holiday.
"Therefore we continue to ask the government to introduce a new bank holiday for 2021 at the end of September to thank NHS and key workers and help the tourism industry repair our balance sheets.
“In the Budget, we welcomed the fact that the Chancellor recognised several of our requests including an extension to the Furlough Scheme and keeping VAT at 5% until the end of September.
"We ask him to keep an open mind on further extending that."
