September results from the Cultural Enterprises Commercial Performance Barometer are now live, and we’re delighted to share it was a record month of responses, with 177 venues participating.
Key findings for this month include:
- Admissions 2% down on September 2024, with a third of venues more than 10% down
- Charging venues driving the drop – free venues 2% up
- Catering spend remains strong
- Retail spend per visitor rebounding for the second consecutive month
- Strong programming continuing to drive performance
After a somewhat encouraging August, September admissions are in line with pre-summer, 2% down on 2024 (31% of venues more than 10% down). The drop is driven by charging venues, with free venues actually 2% up on the same period in 2024. In last month’s webinar we identified that charging venues performed as well as free venues in the school holiday period, but did less well in the month immediately after. September results further highlight this trend, suggesting that the public (in particular families) are responding to the cost-of-living crisis by prioritising their holiday leisure and cutting back outside of these periods. This may suggest a need for attractions to offer incentives to increase post-holiday visitation.
More positively, catering continues to do well across the sector – ATV and SPV are both 6% up on the same period in 2024. Retail SPV is also up (at 6%), representing only the second month this year, where we’ve seen an above-inflation increase. Whether this represents a trend, or is indicative of the unique type of visitors we see in September, remains to be seen. Or perhaps a number of venues are following the lead of this attraction and starting Christmas early:-
“Christmas has come early – we started on 28th September and are already seeing Christmas items selling!”
Sticking to the positives, programming continues to be a key driver of commercial success, as captured by this great example (or set of examples!) from the Museum of the Home:-
“The Museum of the Home hosted the 24th edition of Ceramics in the City Selling Fair. Saturday 13th September was the first day of the fair and was one of our busiest days this year with really strong retail sales. The Museum also participated in the London Design Festival and Shoreditch Design Triangle and hosted workshops and a Late as part of the Design Festival programming. Finally we co-hosted London Textile Month with Selvage Magazine which boosted commercial income and drove ticket sales for workshop and tours.”
In summary, September was a challenging period for the majority, but as in previous months there are great examples of best practice to help the sector navigate the rest of the year.
Where to find out more
Members can learn much more via the online dashboard where you can view results by sub-group and merge months. You can also read examples of best practice in our sentiment dashboard – please do check out both links.
We have now had more than 250 sites contribute to the Commercial Performance Barometer and we’re looking forward to continuing to grow this service in the coming months. Members can expect the latest survey invite on the first Monday of each month.
For more information about the monthly Commercial Performance Barometer service please contact tom@culturalenterprises.org.uk or jon.young@decisionhouse.co.uk
