State of the Leisure Sector Market 2025
Challenges are ahead but it's a positive insurance market
The 2025 Market
It’s difficult to summarise what’s happening in the leisure sector as a whole, because of the extensive coverage to which this title lends itself.
From an attraction and museum/heritage point of view, there has been a slight decline in footfall across the UK over the last 12 months. This can be attributed to many factors, including adverse weather in school holiday periods, the increased complexities of Brexit and the increased costs for visitors coming to the UK from countries with high costing entry visas, such as China.
The lower footfall has called for an increased effort on the part of the leisure market to encourage increased customer spend and stay duration at each location.
As a result of the increased costs applied by the October budget, 2025 is expected to be a challenging year, as businesses that predominantly have seasonal and minimum wage staff adjust to the increased costs.
The fastest growing area in the sector continues to be Farm Parks.
Although the insurance market surrounding the leisure sector could not be described as buoyant, it is certainly in its most positive position for some years.
This is partly due to the time and effort that PIB has invested in the markets supporting the leisure industry, resulting in greater insurer interest and support. There are now competing markets over several groups of business, where previously there was only one supportive market.
In particular, the Pier, Theme Park, Zoological and Heritage markets have all increased.
Our Advice
- The most crucial aspect when marketing a leisure risk is the detail the insured can supply regarding Health and Safety and best practice. It is these areas that will give any insurer the most confidence, when creating a scenario of how the leisure risk is mitigated.
- As they say, the devil is in the detail and clients should be able to provide examples of how they operate and carry out mandatory checks on rides and procedures.
- Due to the complexities and public nature of incidents that surround the leisure industry, we believe a robust D&O policy should be in place as a matter of course, and that cover should be commonplace, although this is not the case.
- We would certainly encourage clients to utilise the PIB Risk Management team’s expertise.