The growing popularity of the Otago Settlers Museum's Pixie Town attraction has helped the museum largely correct an earlier fall in visitor numbers.
Figures released earlier showed there were 12,818 visits to the museum in the first four months of the financial year, beginning July 1 last year - down nearly 5000, or 27%, on 17,628 visits at the corresponding time in the previous financial year.
Museum director Linda Wigley said that last year the global economic downturn could also have adversely affected attendance at the museum.
Latest figures, released at a settlers museum board meeting yesterday, show a much brighter picture, with 43,002 visitors during the first eight months of the financial year, to February 7.
This was down only about 1000 on 44,008 for the comparable period the previous year.
Nearly 4000 of the earlier 5000 fall in overall museum attendance was offset by the increased popularity of Pixie Town, an exhibition which starts before Christmas.
This features popular mechanical "pixies", first built by Nelson man Fred Jones and displayed at the former DIC department store until it closed in the late 1980s.
A total of 14,907 people visited Pixie Town late last year and early this year, up from 11,059 in the 2008-09 financial year, the figures show.
Latest detailed figures also show a drop in several specific visitor categories in the eight-month period, with about 1400 fewer individuals on school-related visits, to 2998; about 1000 fewer individual visits through organised visitor programmes and tours, to 3619; and about 1000 fewer individual visits to external functions held at the museum, to 917.
