Letting people visit as many times as they like for the cost of one admission has become a burden, rather than a bonus.
A budget British holiday
I spent the last two weeks of the school holidays driving around England with my family. We were trying to keep the holiday to a relative budget, staying in holiday parks and eating far too many sandwiches.
While doing so, trying to keep the children entertained, I noticed something concerning. For a remarkably high percentage of attractions, I could pay for admission once, then come back as many times as I wanted within a year.
Attraction admission prices
That’s a good thing, right? An absolute bonus, surely?
Well, no. Not if the multiple visits thing is being used to soften the pill of a wildly expensive admission price.
Below, I’m going to list the admission prices of attractions I visited and others I have discovered since. All prices are the current online advance booking prices, and all of them bestow free entry for the rest of the year.
- Leeds Castle, Kent: Adults £33, children £23.50
- The Eden Project, Cornwall: Adults £38, children £12.
- The Magna Science Adventure Centre, Rotherham: Adults £19.95, children £17.95.
- The Historic Dockyard, Chatham: Adults £28, children £16.
- The Black Country Living Museum, Dudley: Adults £26.95, children £14.95.
Are prices too high?
I could list dozens of other attractions here, but you probably get the point. All of these are good, solid attractions you can spend the best part of a day at. But, holy hell, those prices feel steep. Trying to justify doing something wholesomely educational for roughly the same price as going to Alton Towers (from £34) is tough
Even with inflation over the last few years, most of these prices feel £10 to £15 too expensive.
Making use of annual admission
However, with annual entrance for those prices, it’s a pretty good deal. If, of course, I happen to live nearby.
I do live near Magna, have made thorough use of the annual ticket in the past and will probably do so again. The others, though, I’m not likely to go back to. I live too far away.
Ramping prices up and allowing unlimited annual entry makes sense in many ways. It’s a way of serving local communities and breeding loyalty. More cynically, memberships and entrance fees are taxed differently. Unlimited annual entry is easily brandable as membership.
Pricing out families
But for a family wanting to go on holiday in a different part of the country, it suddenly becomes very daunting. To go and do anything beyond hang out in a park or go for a countryside walk is prohibitively expensive. When entrance fees for the family creep up towards £100, the point of taking a budget holiday in your own country is defeated.
Tourist attractions and museums shouldn’t only serve the local population. They should be things that people will travel for. They should be things that draw people from overseas.
When prices are so high for people who are only ever going to visit once, travelling in the UK becomes less appealing for both Brits and overseas tourists.
Museums should expand horizons. And those horizons are going to be limited if parents can only afford to take their children to the same four or five museums over and over again.
Something that was originally a good idea – letting people come back without paying extra – has, unfortunately, been abused into being a deterrent.
