Helen Henderson

ASVA is delighted to announce a very exciting new partnership with award winning tourism insight consultancy BVA BDRC, to provide members with the opportunity to take part in an innovative new Mystery Visitor Programme in 2022.
 
As members may recall in the summer of 2021, BVA BDRC worked with ASVA to conduct mystery visits to 20 Scottish visitor attractions across a range of sectors and regions.  The project assessed the full range of how visitors experience their sites including, pre-booking and adherence to COVID protocols.  With identical assessment criteria across all attractions, the programme was able to benchmark individual venues against the rest of the sector and inspire with examples of best practices at each. 
 
Following the success of the summer programme of visits, we are continuing our partnership with BVA BRDC and in 2022 they will be rolling out a mystery visitor benchmarking programme across the UK.   The assessment criteria has been put together by a group of stakeholders within the attractions sector and will cover areas such as:

• Pre-booking & arrival
• Queues and visitor management
• Staff engagement
• Cleanliness, health & safety
• Retail & Catering
• Green credentials & messaging

Benchmarking is a central feature of this programme, making it a first of its kind. It allows attractions to understand their strengths and weaknesses and see if these are shared across the sector or whether they have outliers of quality or improvements needed. Unlike other Mystery Visit programmes, individual assessments will be benchmarked against the sector, so you can work out what ‘good’ really looks like. Individual venue results will, of course, be confidential, but through sharing examples of best in class, we hope to help raise standards across the industry.  

As ASVA has partnered with BVA BDRC on the creation of this exciting new programme, we are delighted to advise that our members will receive an exclusive discount if they choose to participate. ASVA members will be charged the accessible price of £175 per visit, with an incremental discount for additional visits.

For more information about this first of its kind programme and to read more about the results of the pilot visits undertaken in the summer, please click here.

The Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA) and its UK counterparts are asking colleagues across Scotland’s tourism industry to part in a national survey to help the STA and the Scottish Tourism Emergency Response Group (STERG) share evidence from Scotland with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

The primary purpose of the UK-wide survey is to build robust evidence on the impacts that the Omicron variant is having on businesses in all sectors of the tourism and hospitality industry across the UK. The findings will also inform STERG on how it can best respond to and offer better support to businesses.

By taking part in the survey, you will be providing vital information which can be presented to UK Government and Scottish Government Ministers to ensure they have a good understanding of the live issues impacting the industry and, importantly, the severity of the financial position facing tourism and hospitality businesses nationwide. Most importantly it will help the collective case to be made for urgent Government intervention.

STA Chief Executive Marc Crothall said: “Working together with STERG, and our industry colleagues on the UK Tourism Industry Council and at DCMS, we will use the information to make the case for policy solutions and interventions from the UK and devolved Governments to mitigate the financial pressures which tourism and hospitality businesses across the UK are experiencing. We appreciate this is a busy time for you, so are very grateful for you taking the time to complete this survey which should only take 5 minutes.”

As it is industry wide, ASVA is aware that some of the questions contained within may not be best tailored for our sector. However, we would request that, despite this, members please take the time to complete the survey. ASVA will not be conducting our own separate survey, as we recognise that it is more impactful and effective if every business in Scottish tourism completes one single piece of research.  

All information provided by participants will remain completely anonymous and you can complete the survey, which closes on 10 January, here.

This afternoon, the First Minister announced details of the £100m support package for businesses impacted by the latest COVID-mitigating measures.

ASVA has been working exceptionally hard to ensure that the Scottish Government is fully aware that it is more than one sector that is hurting just now, with many visitor attractions reporting huge drop offs in visitation, as well as a raft of event cancellations. So many in the sector are on their knees as a result and we are in real danger of losing some of our cultural assets. The fact we have managed to get this recognised is significant, but way more financial support will be required.

ASVA is now calling on the Scottish Government and, crucially, the UK Government to step up further and reintroduce the support measures we saw during lockdown, as tourism businesses are experiencing conditions akin to lockdown now.

Details of the support being offered by the Scottish Government is somewhat limited thus far, but you can find more information at this link.

The latest ASVA Visitor Attractions Barometer report – for October 2021 – is now available to view in the Members Area of this site (see top right of the screen).

This latest report provides us with further evidence of how the industry is faring since Scotland moved ‘beyond level 0’ in August. It is very clear that, despite the fact most restrictions on visitor numbers and travel have been lifted, there has yet to be a wholescale recovery of the attractions sector. 

There are a number of factors which would help explain why this is the case. Firstly, many attracions continue to operate with covid mitigating measures which do limit visitor numbers, despite the fact that they are not mandated to do so by law. In our sector wide survey in September, two thirds of the sector indicated that they are still operating with measures such as timed entry and physical distancing, to further reassure the public, and indeed staff, about their safety when on-site.  We also know that, although it is getting better, consumer confidence regarding visiting indoor attractions in particular is still relatively low. On top of this, we have yet to see the return of international visitors in any significant numbers, and indeed current predictions are that we will not see these visitors return in significant numbers for some time to come.

As a result, the overall picture for October was very similar to that reported on in September. Overall visitor numbers across ASVA member attractions were down 39.2% on pre-covid levels in 2019, a slight upturn of 3% on last month. The year to date figure sees the sector down 65.6% on 2019, further emphasising the point that 2021 is still very much a year of survival, not recovery, for our sector.   Of course, as was observed in September, there are pockets of the sector where things are looking considerably better. Those operating in outdoor environments have, as would be expected, seen visitor numbers at closer to pre-pandemic levels than those who primarily operate in the indoor environment, although for the most part even in outdoor environments these numbers are between 20%-35% down on 2019.

The data from this month confirms that our sector is yet to recover from the impacts of the pandemic. This data will be used by ASVA to ensure that the Scottish Government and other key stakeholders are fully aware of the challenging conditions we continue to operate under as we enter the traditionally quiet winter period.  

As another difficult year for many of us draws to the close, ASVA has been approached by a number of members to discuss the sector’s plans and intentions for 2022, with members enquiring about others’ plans regarding continuing COVID protocols, pricing plans, opening hours, investment priorities etc.

With this in mind, we would be very grateful if all attraction members would take the time to complete this very quick survey. The survey will give ASVA a clear indication of our members’ intentions as things currently stand. Once the survey results have been analysed, we plan to share these across our membership to help you with your own decision-making processes.

The survey is in a multiple-choice format, all responses are anonymous and it should only take 2-3 minutes to complete. We’d like to thank you in advance for your co-operation and look forward to sharing the overall results with you after the survey closes on Monday, 13 December.

You can complete the survey now by clicking here.

The latest ASVA Visitor Attractions Barometer report – for September 2021 – is now available to view in the Members Area of this site.

This report provides what is probably the closest we have to genuinely comparable visitor statistics between 2021 and 2019. We say this because September was the first full month since the pandemic first struck where attractions were not required by law to operate with restrictions that inhibited visitor numbers through closures or physical distancing measures.

Of course, this is not to say that attractions did not continue to operate with covid mitigation measures that limited numbers. We know from our sector-wide survey, conducted in September, that, in order to provide the reassurances that many visitors are looking for, more than 92% of attractions maintained some form of covid mitigating measures beyond those required by law, with almost two-thirds of attractions operating with either physical distancing or some other similar measures to limit the number of visitors on-site at any one time. We also did not see the return of international visitors in any significant numbers in September and there was undoubtedly still a considerable degree of caution amongst domestic visitors when it came to visiting indoor spaces.

As a result, whilst September provided conditions as close to pre – pandemic levels as we have yet seen, we have not seen a significant increase in visitor numbers for the month. Overall visitor numbers across ASVA member attractions were down 46.2% on pre-covid levels in 2019. As was observed in August, certain parts of the sector were able to demonstrate more of a recovery than others, with predominately outdoor attractions considerably outperforming their indoor counterparts. As an example, Wildlife/Animal Attractions were actually up by 8.4% on 2019 levels. Similarly, Outdoor/Nature attractions had a comparatively good month, only 9.1% down on 2019. For indoor attractions, although the picture is improving somewhat, the vast majority were still considerably down on pre-pandemic levels, with Historic Houses/Palaces down 56.4% and Castles/Forts reporting a decrease of 65.4% on 2019 levels.

As has been consistently reported throughout the year, it is very clear that there is yet to be a full-scale recovery for the attractions sector. Data from our barometer reports will continue to be used to ensure that the challenging conditions that many in our sector continue to operate under, are highlighted in the corridors of power.