Winchester Heritage Open Days is one of the biggest Heritage Open Days hubs in the country, accounting for over 2% of the national programme.
In 2019 there were 145 events over ten days in more than 70 venues in and around Winchester, with over 22,000 festival visits.
This year more than half of the bookable events were fully booked by the opening day of the festival which is extraordinary. Generally for FREE events 45% of tickets are not taken up until the day of the event.
Nearly 60,000 visits to our website between the box office opening in mid July and the last day of the festival, with more than 3,000 visitors to website on our first festival Saturday. A reach of 55,000 on social media during the festival and in the preceding 20days. There are now just under 1000 people on our mailing list with a pre-festival engagement rate of 75% and an average engagement rate of 54%.
62% of attendees specifically came into Winchester because of the festival and 60% came into Winchester on multiple days for multiple events. We had a few festival super fans this year; at least three attended twenty or more and a further twenty attended ten or more events over the ten days.
Nearly three quarters of our visitors live within 15 miles of Winchester, and around 17% travelled more than 25miles to attend for one or more of the days. An increase of 2% on the previous year
We are also seeing overseas visitors discovering Winchester Heritage Open Days on the internet, and specifically coming to Winchester because of it. One from Australia wrote to us afterwards saying
“totally worth travelling to the UK all the way from Australia (28hrs!), to find myself smack in the middle of Heritage Open Days. So much fantastic insight into history - and for a traveller on a tight budget it was wonderful to have access to much of this at no cost! Nicky and Becky were amazing at supporting my interest to attend as many events as possible and assisting me to get into tours, even though I was coming in at the 11th hour. Thanks so much for holding these incredible events - and for making an International traveller feel so welcome! An unforgettable experience!!’
Events this year included open buildings, guided tours and walks, lectures and seminars, live theatre and music, living history events, heritage craft workshop, tastings, linking up with other festivals, exhibitions and behind the scenes visits.
The tours at Winchester College are probably the most popular but there was also a huge interest in the talks, Open Greener Houses, Abbots Barton Farmhouse, events at Great Hall, behind the scenes tours across the city .
We know from previous years 89% of visitors learn something new thanks to their HODs experience. HODs also engages the local community with 88% feeling more proud of their local area and 85% feeling inspired to visit another heritage event or site in the near future.
Here are some of the comments we received in 2019 when we ask what they liked most about HODs;
Having free access to Winchester's Historic Buildings, and seeing parts of Winchester not usually open to public
The variety of events on offer - The casualness of attending, i.e. if there was space you we welcome to join - The quality of the people doing the tours
Enthusiasm of the tour guides, learning about history & talks in places not usually open
A chance to step back & appreciate the richness of local history
It is not just the visitors who gain, some businesses who hosted events have shared that they experienced a significant increase in sales as a direct result of HODs and many attractions reported their visitor numbers were up throughout the festival period and not just on the days they were running events. The 2019 festival was incredibly successful.