As the world moves into using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), so do we.

This means that the figures are no longer directly comparable to previous dates as the methodology for collecting them has changed within GA4, therefore the statistics with the yellow background cannot be compared directly with previous months and years.

To read more about Google Analytics 4, please go to: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10089681?hl=en

Definitions of new metrics

• Overall Sessions – a session is a period of time during which a user interacts with our website. A session initiates when a user views a page or screen and no session is currently active (e.g. their previous session has timed out).
• Engaged Sessions – the number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, or had a conversion event, or had 2 or more screen or page views.
• Active Users – number of distinct users who visited our website and had an engaged session (lasting 10 seconds or more or has two or more page views or has at least one conversion event) and this includes a first event (new users are counted) or engagement time (any time logged on any event).
• Engagement rate – number of engaged sessions divided by the total number of sessions.

Click on the below table to view these stats (statistics provided by Google Analytics).

Between May and August 2025, stats are down compared to 2024 due to external factors that are also affecting other websites (including destinations) across the UK. This is due to Google implementing AI Overview, carousels and sponsored content at the top of the search results. Also, a major transport campaign with partnership funding was launched from May 2024, causing a disparity with year-on-year figures.

From September 2025 stats are affected by AI overview, carousels and sponsored content, which is also affecting other destination websites across the UK.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in the engagement rate compared to last year. This has highlighted that users visiting our website are more interactive and are more engaged with the content on our site. We’ve seen a higher engagement rate compared to a lower number of engaged sessions as a greater percentage of our total sessions met the criteria for an engaged session such as lasting more than 10 seconds, 2+ page views or a key event. We’ve seen an increase in direct traffic (people typing in the URL of our website) and paid traffic (our digital campaigns) engagement rates. This shows that high-quality users are visiting our website who are more precise with their searches on our site, plus they are taking the time to read the content and crawl the site.

In February 2026 the users are up 15.78% and sessions have increased by 75.29% compared to February 2025. 

Organic traffic also grew by 37.15% and direct traffic was up by 48.57% compared to February 2025. Additionally, the number of page views increased by 78.03% and the winter page saw further growth, gaining over 22,400 page views (up 575.11%) compared to last year.