Visiting a museum, gallery or historic property is one of the main motivations for overseas and domestic tourists, according to a report published last month.

The Heritage Lottery Fund publication, Investing in Success, outlines the scale of heritage tourism in the UK and makes the case for continued investment.

Speaking at the report’s launch, Jenny Abramsky, the chairwoman of the HLF, said the research was a first. “It has produced figures that are higher than most people would expect.”

Factors behind the recent recovery in visitors numbers are the weak pound, which has made the UK a more attractive destination for overseas visitors, and an increase in the number of domestic tourists because of the recession.

But Sandie Dawe the chief executive of VisitBritain warned the improvement in figures was “good fortune not good strategy”. Speaking to Museums Journal she said that it would be wrong to rest a strategy on the exchange rate.

“Our longer term strategy is to grow visitors from developing markets such as India and China. We have a huge amount of history and heritage in the UK, which is a strength, but if it’s not portrayed in a visitor-friendly  way it can look like a history lesson.”

She predicted a “flat picture” for visitor numbers this year and added that there was already evidence that the American market was coming back and that heritage was particularly popular with visitors from the US and Canada.

Writing in the report Fiona Reynolds, the director-general of the National Trust said the increase in domestic tourism was more of a trend than a blip. “We felt there was something more: a sense that, in a world increasingly obsessed with materialism and instant gratification people are hungry for the ‘real thing’.”

At a glance

- Heritage tourism sector contributes £20.6bn to UK economy, supporting an estimated 195,000 full-time jobs

- Four in ten overseas leisure visitors cite heritage as the primary motivation for their trip to the UK, more than any other single factor

- Visits to English Heritage properties up 17 per cent in summer 2009, National Trust visitors up 17.5 per cent over 2009.