News

ALVA Public Sentiment Tracker Results

Added: 19 Mar 2021

Our friends at the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) have shared with ASVA their latest wave of public sentiment research they commissioned with Steve Mills of Decision House. This is the 7^th wave of results and follows similar sentiment tracker research conducted last Spring and Summer to measure the changing public mood about the nature of the UK epidemic, and to gauge the effect on people’s optimism of the successful roll-out of the vaccine programme.
 
The headlines from this latest wave of research are:

• Since end January there has been a notable positive shift in confidence around visiting attractions when they re-open.
• The increase in confidence over the past month has been driven by those who have been lower on confidence throughout the pandemic – particularly older people (aged 40+)
• The growth in confidence has also been driven by those living in the south of England and Scotland, with the Midlands and North of England yet to see the same increases.
• The positive and safe visit experiences at attractions in 2020 have helped to lay the foundations for visitor confidence in 2021, now that anxiety appears to be easing.
• This easing of anxiety and growth in confidence is being driven primarily by less concern around new variants and high infection rates, plus perceived success around the vaccine rollout.
• The recent positive impact of the vaccination programme on public confidence has been particularly noteworthy – having the first vaccine dose now increases the proportion saying they will visit any attraction from 47% to 57% (+10%). This compares with an uplift of just 44% to 48% (+4%) at end January
• The impact of the vaccine is even more effective in encouraging the fearful to at least consider a visit – moving people from ‘unlikely to visit for a long time’ to ‘wait and see what happens for a short while’
• Since the end of January there has been a significant drop in the proportion of the market who will feel more anxious than usual about using indoor attraction facilities after re-opening. Anxiety is now lower than 2020.
• Most safety measures will still be highly comforting to visitors, although with visit confidence now growing, their impact on the visit decision is perhaps diminishing a little. There is now a small minority (around 7%) who will not visit until a ‘normal’ experience can be delivered.  

You can view the complete report at this link.