Northumberland Estates customers have a vast age range varying from young children to OAP’s (Old Age Pensioners). Here is a table showing you the groups age ranges.
The nationalities of the visitors also vary a lot and although most of the visitors are just day visitors they do have a lot of foreign visitors. 20% of the visitors to Northumberland Estates are from overseas and the majority of the overseas visitors are from the USA. There are also people who are using Northumberland Estates buildings as a venue to hire, for events, such as weddings and parties. They may have the guest hall in the Castle or a marquee in The Alnwick Gardens. They also have one major event hirer and those are the film companies, the most famous one of course has to be Harry potter. They also have a lot of TV programmes that use Northumberland Estates such as Blue Peter, Antiques road Show and Badger.
Northumberland estates also have a lot of other competitors which are surprisingly not other castles, stately homes or English heritage sites. The main competitors to Northumberland estates in the North east would have to be places that can offer you either of the following things...
Shopping – The competition would come from Newcastle and would come from the Metro centre and Eldon Square.
Museums and Art Galleries – Again the main competition would be from Newcastle and would be from the Laing Art Gallery and The Baltic.
Sports Attractions – This could be anywhere really but mostly from Alnwick itself from The Willowburn sports centre although for families who are a bit more thrill seeking wet ‘n’ wild could also be competition.
As I said above Castles, stately homes and other English heritage sites are not the main competition, although there are a lot in the North east and around Alnwick. However, people who are just on a day trip to the area have to decide what to do so then places like Holy Island, Chillingham or Bamburgh Castle, Hardiens wall or The Farne Islands all become competition for Northumberland Estates.
All of the above attractions do however work together as part of Northumberland Attractions, Northumberland attractions work together to encourage visitors/tourists to visit the area for long weekends (2/3 nights). They encourage people to come for long weekends so that they can visit more than one of the above places as they would if they came on a day trip.