News

December 2005 | Towering success for Portsmouth

The Spinnaker Tower, the centrepiece of the £38 million Renaissance of Portsmouth Harbour redevelopment project has received incredible visitor numbers and praise since it opened to the public just a matter of weeks ago (on 18 October). The long awaited and much anticipated 170 meter high viewing tower is set to shortly receive its’ 100,000^th visitor, exceeding all original targets.

Owned by Portsmouth City Council, the tower is operated and managed by Heritage, the operations arm of the Continuum Group – specialists in the design, operations and marketing of tourism projects. All the interpretation within the tower along with the waterfront café bar was also produced by the design and multimedia teams within Continuum.

Despite being a controversial council project that was over budget and overdue, the tower is a remarkable feat of engineering and provides a sculptural icon for the South coast of England and a new world class visitor attraction for the UK. Tall and elegant, it has two large white sweeping arcs that give the tower its distinctive sail design, and is the tallest publicly accessible tower in the UK. Its spectacular views are what truly sell the tower, with 340 degree panoramic views of Portsmouth Harbour and the Isle of Wight, visitors can see for 23 miles all around.

An internal high speed lift is taking visitors up to the three glass encapsulated viewing platforms at 100m, 105m and 110m. View deck I boasts Europe’s’ largest glass floor – an eight square meter glazed floor which is enthralling visitors to lie, sit or dance on! Whilst the second view deck features two self-contained multimedia stations showing a computer generated reconstruction of the view and three famous ships of the Solent – the Mary Rose, HMS Victory and Dreadnought. Floor level interpretation provides additional directional information on view deck I. The third view deck, entitled the Crows Nest is open to the elements.

Juliana Delaney, MD of Heritage and a director of the Continuum Group said: “the visitor response to the tower has just been phenomenal, with astonishing numbers visiting, beating all targets. The reaction too has been one of universal praise, with the views never ceasing to exceed expectations!

"As well as bringing a new world class visitor attraction and modern iconic structure to the UK, the tower is acting as a catalyst in the marketing of Portsmouth and pulling in increased numbers of visitors to the town. It is already providing an observation deck for the Historic Dockyards and helping to boost tourism overall."