ALVA Press releases

ALVA announces its members' visitor figures for 2016

27 March 2017: The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) announced its members' visitor figures for 2016 today (Monday, March 27, 2017), which saw an average increase of 7.2% on 2015 visitor numbers to UK attractions. Scottish attractions had the greatest increase of 15.6% growth. Overall 129,948,728 visits were made to the top 241 ALVA sites in the UK.

66,938,947 people – more than the total population of the UK - visited attractions in London and therefore it is no surprise that the Top 10 most visited attractions were all London based. The British Museum continued to be the most popular visitor attraction overall for the 10th year running with 6,420,395 visitors and remaining in 2nd place was the National Gallery with 6,262,839 visitors – seeing a 6% increase. 3rd place was achieved by the Tate Modern, which saw 5,839,197 visitors; the Natural History Museum moved to 4th place, and Southbank Centre was 5th – mainly caused by the current closure for refurbishment of Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery, which re-open in 2018.

The Royal Academy credited their 17% increase to several exhibitions including Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse in the spring and their annual Summer Exhibition which attracted over 229,200 visits. This was the second highest total since 1955 and only the 7th time since World War 1, that they have surpassed 200,000 visitors. ‘Abstract Expressionism’ at the end of the year attracted over 20,000 visitors in just 4 days during the Festive Break. The V&A was in 8th place receiving 3,022,086 visitors.

<< Back