Eden Project hardest hit as tourist trade suffers

With its 12,000 plants housed in two "soap bubble" domes and overflowing car parks, the Eden Project has grown used to being heralded as the attraction which poured £155m into the local economy and put Cornwall back on the tourism map.

But directors of the world's largest greenhouse had to deal yesterday with claims that the Eden financial bubble may have burst after figures showed a drop of nearly 20 per cent in visitors over the past 12 months. A survey of Britain's most popular attractions found that the eco-centre in a clay pit near St Austell suffered the largest decline of the top 20 venues as the domestic tourism industry grappled with problems that ranged from the war in Iraq to the hottest summer on record.

The futuristic "biomes", which exceeded the projected annual visitor target of 640,000 within four months of opening in 2001, have been credited with sparking an economic revival in Cornwall, attracting nearly two million people in their first year and providing a windfall for local businesses.

But figures produced by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (Alva) showed that in 2003 attendance dropped by 19 per cent to 1.4 million, threatening Eden's position as one of the top paid-for venues in the UK. Managers at the project, who last year announced a £107m expansion to include a third biome, acknowledged that the fall was substantial. But they said it was expected after two years of runaway success, and attendance for 2004 had not continued a downward trend.

Dave Meneer, the marketing director of the Eden Project, said: "At 1.4 million visitors we are still at more than double the projections when we opened. When you are a new attraction, you are bound to reach a point at which it is no longer a novelty and numbers will fall off. But we are still far beyond our projections and the expansion will bring us up to a level of dealing with a million visitors. In that context, a fall of 19 per cent is something we can live with quite comfortably."

The Alva figures showed a reversal in fortunes for most venues, including several whose previously inexorably rising attendances had made them leading lights in a troubled industry. Numbers at the Tate Modern in London, which has become the world's most popular modern art museum in the four years since it opened, fell by 16 per cent to 3.9 million.

The slump appeared to affect rarefied and popular institutions equally; Canterbury Cathedral and Legoland suffered slumps of 4.5 per cent.

Of the top 20 most-visited attractions, only six managed to buck the trend by reporting increased attendance, while 40 out of the 78 business listed reported a net drop in visitors.

Tourism bosses said the problems could be attributed to factors such as the war in Iraq, the growth of out-of-town shopping centres and live sport on television. But they put much of the blame on a very British obsession with the weather.

John Lee, the chairman of Alva, said: "The main factor for last year appears to have been the very hot weather. People are less willing to go far from home or leave their spot on the beach. The sector is now extremely tough. The arrival of lottery-funded projects and free entry to museums has made life more difficult for paid-for attractions which were already dealing with long-term sociological changes such as the rise of home entertainment."

The British Association of Leisure Parks, Piers and Attractions (Balppa), which represents 5,500 businesses, said several of its members had reported sharp falls in customers as temperatures exceeded 100F in August. Colin Dawson, chief executive of Balppa, said: "A fall in attendance does not necessarily mean disaster. What matters is the spend per visitor."