Castle hit by fall in visitors

The castle saw a slight fall in visitor numbers

Edinburgh Castle has slipped slightly in a league table of the UK's top admission-charging attractions, according to statistics.

Figures from the English Tourism Council for the year 2000 have also revealed that attractions throughout the UK saw a reduction in visitors.

The council said that overall visits to the UK attractions in 2000 totalled 413 million - down 2% on the 1999 figure.

Tourism has suffered a number of setbacks

Figures showed that 1.2m people visited Edinburgh Castle, which was a 1.3% drop on the previous year. The attraction dropped two places to 14th in a table of the 19 top admission-charging attractions.

The fuel crisis of September 2000 was among the factors being blamed for the downturn.

A spokeswoman for Historic Scotland, which runs the castle, said it was optimistic that there has been no significant downturn.

The spokeswoman said: "Numbers were down in 2000 due to factors such as the rail crisis and fuel crisis at the end of the year.

"We are not going to say that we haven't had a difficult 2001, but we very much hope that we can keep the momentum of the figures seen in November and December going.

Foot-and-mouth

"Edinburgh Castle is still Scotland's most popular visitor attraction and is world-renowned."

VisitScotland, formerly known as the Scottish Tourist Board, blamed the foot-and-mouth crisis for a downturn in numbers at visitor attractions last year.

A spokeswoman said: "Scotland is seen as an expensive destination at the moment but at the same time it is a destination that people still want to come to but are putting it off for just now.

"A lot of visitor attractions were closed down completely because of the foot-and-mouth crisis, and areas such as Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders were badly affected."

The Millennium Dome at Greenwich, in south London, topped the league table for 2000 with 6.5 million visitors, with the British Airways London Eye (the Millennium Wheel) in second place with 3.3 million.