Falkirk area attractions are the big success story in the newly published Visitor Attraction Monitor, led by a massive increase in visits to the Falkirk Wheel.

The Falkirk Wheel attracted 437,388 visitors throughout 2006, an increase of 46.5% on the previous year. The success places the Wheel at number 8 in the national table of free-admission attractions in Scotland, just behind Glasgow’s Museum of Transport.

The wider Falkirk area seems to have had a good year of it too. Nearby attractions including Callendar House, the Park Gallery and Muiravonside Country Park have all reported big increases, as well as Birkhill Fireclay Mine and Kinneil Museum in Bo’ness.

The figures are published in the annual Visitor Attraction Monitor, compiled for VisitScotland by independent research body The Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development at Glasgow Caledonian University. The Monitor documents figures from approximately 700 visitor attractions throughout Scotland.

VisitScotland Area Director, Iain Close, said: “Everyone at the Falkirk Wheel deserves credit for delivering this success. The enormous success of the Wheel is down to their hard work in ensuring that they have the right product in place and good marketing to support it, as they’ve proved with summer and winter campaigns that backed up the exposure in our long-running Falkirk TV ad.

“The Falkirk Wheel has also been quick to realise the importance of collaborative marketing and they are a key player in the group of Falkirk businesses that won the largest ever award from our Challenge Fund last year.“