The end of the automatic Christmas visit 

Across the UK, December performance was generally up year on year. Some attractions exceeded targets. Others sold out festive programmes entirely. Cafés were busy. Secondary spend did its job. And yet, something fundamental has shifted.

The assumption that families will “just go somewhere” over Christmas continues to erode. Visitors behaved exactly as they have throughout 2025: carefully, selectively, and with a finely tuned sense of value. Christmas didn’t override that behaviour. It sharpened it. The season no longer hands out wins for participation.

The most obvious dividing line this Christmas wasn’t location, brand or budget. It was intent. The strongest performers treated December as a peak. Planning started early. Budgets were committed. Creative wasn’t improvised. Paid media wasn’t an afterthought.

Advertising showed the experience, rather than gesturing vaguely at festivity. Messaging evolved across the season, shifting from curiosity to urgency. Offers were used sparingly, aimed at quieter dates rather than sprayed across the calendar.

In one case, post-visit surveys showed digital advertising was almost as influential as word of mouth and that most visitors were new. Christmas, it turns out, can still be about growth, if you let it happen.

Over Christmas, we supported attractions, generating just under £4 million in ticket revenue. Return on ad spend ranged from a headline 109 to 1 at the very top end, down to 8 to 1 at the lowest. Blended across our work, every £1 of media spend returned an average almost £27 in revenue. Which is impressive. But also slightly beside the point, if you stop there.

What’s more interesting, and far more important, is how those results were achieved when compared to Christmas 2024. Spend was up across most attractions in 2025, but revenue didn’t just follow politely behind. In many cases, it leapt ahead. These weren’t marginal uplifts or incremental wins; they were step-changes in performance.

That’s because 2025 wasn’t simply a year of “spend more, get more”. It was a year of better leverage. Budgets were larger, yes, but confidence in scale was higher too. Campaigns were allowed to breathe. Media was given room to work properly. And as a result, revenue multipliers strengthened significantly across the board. This wasn’t brute-force growth. It was maturity.

What mattered wasn’t just efficiency, but intent: events that justified the journey, programming that respected the audience’s time, and media that understood when to apply pressure, and when to step back. As the UK’s leading performance marketing agency for visitor attractions, this is the work. Christmas just made it painfully obvious which teams had the expertise, and which ones were still hoping tradition would do the heavy lifting.

One lesson came through with unusual clarity: decoration alone no longer sells Christmas. The best-performing attractions invested in proper programming, lantern trails, immersive shows, iconic designs, narrative-led experiences, events with a beginning, middle and end. Where the experience was distinct, demand followed. Santa, by himself, struggled.

Santa with a story sold out. Visitors aren’t buying access. They’re buying something to remember. Christmas merely removed the margin for ambiguity.

Not everyone chased demand with lower prices. Some held firm, focused instead on explaining value clearly and repeatedly. They were rewarded. Clear imagery. Clear messaging. A straightforward explanation of what the ticket actually delivers. Revenue rose regardless. People will still pay. They just won’t pay if they have to work out what they’ll actually get. 

Footfall was solid rather than spectacular. What mattered more was intent. Visits were purposeful, tied to ticketed experiences. Food and drink performed well across much of the sector. Retail was more mixed. Relaxed sessions were quieter in some venues. Venue hire surged, skewing towards exclusive bookings. And the busiest days, as ever, lived in that strange, lawless space between Christmas and New Year. Christmas still has patterns. It just no longer forgives complacency. 

If Christmas 2025 taught us anything, it’s that momentum doesn’t magically arrive. It is built, or lost, in the weeks immediately after the decorations come down. There is a familiar instinct in the sector to pause at the start of the year. To wait and see how things “settle”. To let February drift past before deciding whether demand is really there. Increasingly, that hesitation is the most expensive decision of all. But the market we’re now in means 2026 doesn’t allow for it. An early Easter compresses planning windows. February half-term will be the first real test of the year, not a warm-up act. And Easter itself won’t reward last-minute confidence. By the time the data feels reassuring, the opportunity will already have passed. The attractions that will win this year are the ones making decisions now.

Treating the first quarter like a peak, not a prelude. Locking in programming, committing to media, shaping messages early and pressure-testing plans with people who understand how visitors actually behave, not how we hope they might.

Christmas showed that quality, clarity and conviction still convert. The same will be true in February. And even more so at Easter. If 2026 is going to be a record year, it won’t happen by waiting to see how things play out. It will happen by choosing a direction, backing it properly, and working with experienced partners who are prepared to fight alongside you, not just advise from the sidelines. If you’d like to explore what that could look like for your attraction, and how to make the first three months of the year work harder than ever, now is the moment to start the conversation. Because momentum (as 2025 quietly reminded us) favours the prepared.