Zoo more visited than UK royal houses

Figures released by Britain’s Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) have undermined a government-instigated myth that the monarchy is a major tourist attraction in the country.

ALVA has released a table of the number of visitors at important tourist sites in 2012 in which the British Museum is the number one attraction, with 5.6 million visitors.

While the table does not include occupied royal residences, when visitor numbers at those sites published by the Royal Collection Trust are inserted in the ALVA table, one finds the royal residences struggling behind minor local attractions including a train museum.

According to the Royal Collection Trust, Buckingham Palace where Queen Elizabeth resides, has had just 616,000 visits last year that puts it at number 42 in the table behind the National Railway Museum in York.

The Windsor Castle, which drew 1.2 million visitors, also ranked behind the Chester Zoo outside London, which had 1.4 million visitors.

The poor royal tourism numbers are despite the royal wedding of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson in 2011 and her own Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, whose huge costs were excused by the British government through claiming that the monarchy is a major boost to tourism.