England Reveals Its Most Visited Attractions in 2020

VisitEngland published its list of the most popular and visited attractions last year. The ranking is divided into two categories, namely, paid attractions and attractions that are free to visit. It is also interesting to compare the visitor volume in 2019 and 2020 as not only hotels in London, Liverpool, or Manchester suffered from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Annual Visitor Attractions Survey 2020 only proves the negative impact of the pandemic on all tourism-related businesses. Last year, paid and free attractions in England saw a tremendous drop of 65% in visitors. Paid attractions also generated 55% fewer revenues. There is nothing strange about this as many attractions were closed during the lockdown and had significantly fewer domestic and international visitors last year.

Museums, galleries, historic sites, and places of worship had the biggest drop in visitors last year. Typically, these sights rely on foreign tourists but the borders were closed for a good part of the year, and so these attractions couldn’t receive many overseas guests. Various outdoor attractions such as parks, wildlife areas, and zoos had the lowest decrease in visitors. As expected, urban attractions had a sharper decrease when compared to attractions in the countryside – 74% vs. 47% respectively. The same applies to indoor and outdoor attractions – the decline in indoor attraction visitors was 76% and only 43% for outdoor attractions.

Royal Botanic Gardens (also known as Kew Gardens) turned out to be the most popular paid attraction in England in 2020. This is the first time that a garden occupies the top stop in this ranking. Chester Zoo and RHS Garden Wisley scored second and third respectively. The Tower of London, which was the most popular paid attraction from 2009 to 2019, saw a sharp decrease in visitors and only ranked 10th. In 2019, the Tower of London welcomed 3 million visitors. A year later, this number fell to 448,000 visitors.

The top 3 most popular free attractions in England saw declines of over 70% in 2020. The Tate Modern is the leader here with 1.4 million visitors (77% lower compared to 2019). It is followed by the Natural History Museum (1.3 million visitors, 76% down), and the British Museum (1.28 million visitors, 80% down). Many attractions used the pandemic period to evolve, upgrade their offers, launch online booking, and add more materials online.