SEVEN tourism hotspots in the north have been named in an annual list of the top visitor attractions in the UK.
The table by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) ranks more than 200 locations in terms of their total annual visits.
And according to ALVA, there were more than 2.7 million visits to these seven attractions in the north, pumping in millions to the economy.
Titanic Belfast was the highest ranked attraction in Northern Ireland at 49th with nearly 680,000 visits, up eight places from its 2015 position.
Last year, the attraction was named the World's Leading Tourist Attraction at the World Travel Awards.
The Giant’s Causeway and the Ulster Museum were next in 55th and 72nd place respectively, together bringing in 1.2 million visitors.
Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge came in at 79 with 420,000 tourists – a 20 per cent increase from the previous year.
The National Trust’s Mount Stewart House fell one position from 2015, now ranked in 136th position.
Coming in on the lower end of the rankings were the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum and Ulster American Folk Park – both new additions to the table.
Combined, they notched up just over 311,000 visits in 2016, an increase of 5.6 and 7.8 per cent from 2015, respectively.
Susie Brown, director of corporate development Tourism NI welcomed the news.
"To see the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions feature seven tourism sites across Northern Ireland is very significant for our local tourism industry," she said.
"It signals that our tourism attractions are competing with the best attractions across the UK.
"As Northern Ireland’s tourism offering goes from strength to strength, we are gaining worldwide acclaim as a must see destination with a unique visitor offering, capable of attracting visitors from across the globe."
The figures come following a call from the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee to reduce tourism VAT to 9 per cent – the current rate in the south – in order to boost the north’s economy.
As it stand, the tourism VAT rate is 20 per cent.
ALVA list more than 2200 tourist sites who host 119 million domestic and overseas visitors each year - around 28 per cent of the visits made annually in the UK.
The British Museum topped the poll with 6.4m visits, followed by the National Gallery in second with 6.3m and the Tate Modern with 5.8m.
