LIVERPOOL’S Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai has been praised by visitors, although event organisers are having to downgrade their expectations for the event’s attendance.

More than 8,000 people saw the city’s offering in the first four days of the six-month event.

A survey of more than 1,200 people found that 85% previously had little or no knowledge of Liverpool and the North West of England, while 97% would recommend it to a friend.

Mike Taylor, director of investment and enterprise at Liverpool Vision, said: “We are delighted by the initial numbers and, more importantly, the responses that we are getting to our survey. It’s particularly important that we are reaching an entirely new audience, the vast majority of whom knew little or nothing about Liverpool and the North West.

“It is pleasing that almost all visitors are saying they would recommend the pavilion to people they knew who were visiting the Expo.

“Even if we maintain a flat average, we will be hitting at least 375,000 people during the event. Given the overall attendances, we are very happy with how Liverpool is doing.”

Liverpool had expected to receive about 1% of the estimated 70m visitors, but initial attendances have been much lower than expected.

Saturday and Sunday saw only 208,000 and 215,000 people visit the site while the attendance on Monday, a Chinese national holiday, was 193,000.

Although the visitor numbers were about half of those expected, there were long queues at the entrances to the site as well as at the most-popular pavilions. After the Chinese Pavilion, the national pavilions from Western Europe attracted large crowds with queues at the UK Pavilion stretching for two to three hours.