There are about five weeks of the school holidays left, which means most attractions are deep into the part of summer where you stop asking "how are we doing" and start asking "how are we doing compared to everyone else." It's a mixed one. Some venues are having a brilliant summer. Others are looking at the same sunshine everyone else got and wondering what they could be doing differently.
Weather isn't the whole story here.
It's not just the heat
The weather this summer has made life harder, and it's worth saying that plainly. Analysis of VisitBritain and ALVA data, via Savills' research into the sector, found that last summer's heat saw visitor numbers to England's attractions fall 9% year on year during the hottest month. Hospitality has felt a similar squeeze: analysis from Access Hospitality and DesignMyNight found bookings fell by as much as 48% during the worst of this June's heatwave, with covers down 19% and walk-ins down 11%. That's real, and it's not something any attraction can message its way around.
But weather isn't acting alone. Two attractions twenty minutes apart, with near-identical conditions, can still have completely different summers. For that, you have to look at what else is happening underneath the sunshine.
Barclays' spending data shows confidence in non-essential spending dipping to 49% in April before starting to recover. By June, non-essential card spending had turned a corner, up 1.7% year on year, and entertainment spending specifically rose 5.8% in May even as travel spend fell for a third straight month. People haven't stopped choosing to spend money on days out. They've become more selective about which ones, and slower to commit until they're confident it's worth it.
Put those two things together and you get a summer where booking windows have compressed, campaigns planned six weeks out are being rewritten around a five-day forecast, and "we got there in the end" has become a fairly accurate way to describe a season that should, on paper, have been straightforward.
If that sounds like your summer too, add your voice to what we're hearing. Email us at hello@navigate.agency and tell us how it's actually going. We're building a picture from conversations happening across the sector right now, and yours will help sharpen it further as we put together the full Summer Trends report in September.
What we're seeing work right now
Working across the sector every day means a few patterns have already become clear enough that we didn't want to hold them back until September.
We're seeing a genuine uplift among attractions running a simple summer savings offer, most commonly a straightforward 15% VAT reduction on admission, with nothing else stacked on top and no added complexity. Not every attraction has the flexibility to do this, and that's fine. The real lesson isn't about discounting. It's about keeping the offer simple and making the value unmistakable, whether that's a clear price reduction, a full day out for the family, free parking, hours of entertainment, or a reason to come back more than once.
Attractions doing this well are pairing it with imagery that shows exactly what visitors get rather than implying it, and messaging that answers "is this worth it" directly instead of leaving a discount to do the talking. Authentic visitor quotes, reviews and user-generated content are doing real work here too, reinforcing the value being promised with proof that it holds up.
And the organic content question keeps coming up. The strongest-performing attractions aren't letting their best posts disappear after a day or two. They're putting paid media behind authentic imagery, visitor content and user-generated video, with the right permissions, turning good organic content into great campaigns. If your visitors are already telling your story for you, make sure more people see it.
There's a pattern around awareness as well. The strongest campaigns aren't optimising for ROAS alone. They're balancing efficient conversion activity with broader awareness, on the basis that future bookings depend on continually reaching new audiences, not just converting the demand that already exists.
Freshness matters more than usual too. New arrivals, experiences, updates, reveals and seasonal additions are giving visitors a reason to return and keeping marketing relevant right through the holidays, even for people who visited only last year.
Pick a lane. We'll help you sprint.
Four weeks of summer left is not a lot of time, and if you're fielding questions internally that you don't yet have great answers to, sometimes what helps most is a focused push on the one thing that's actually stuck.
Rather than pitching a whole new plan, we'd rather ask what's keeping you up at night and help with that specific thing:
- Reaching new audiences through paid media
- A reactivation campaign for members or previous visitors who haven't been back this year
- A refresh of paid creative and value messaging that's started to feel stale
- A quick, well-built data capture campaign so autumn isn't starting from zero
- Influencer or creator support
- Better tracking, reporting or basket analysis, particularly if the board's asking questions the current dashboards can't answer
We can focus on the challenge that matters most to your organisation right now. Sometimes the biggest difference doesn't come from doing more. It comes from focusing on the one activity that will have the greatest commercial impact before the season ends.
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If that's you, email us at hello@navigate.agency and tell us what it is.
We'd like to hear from you either way, whether your summer's been a good one or the kind you'll be glad to see the back of.
Let's talk
Looking for more information? Fill out the form below to start a conversation with Olly our Marketing Director, or book a quick chat with him at a time that suits you by clicking here.
By Olly Reed, Marketing Director, Navigate
Olly Reed is Marketing Director at Navigate, specialising in brand strategy, content, and digital growth for visitor attractions and conservation organisations. With more than 15 years’ experience, he recently led a major weather campaign with Chester Zoo, designed to challenge how apps communicate and position forecasts.