Overseas visitation remain stable, spend up
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British travellers took the same amount of overseas trips in 2012 but spent more money than the year before, new Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures have revealed.
The latest numbers from ONS, based on estimates from the International Passenger Survey, showed a 3% increase in spend on visits abroad by UK travellers in the first nine months of 2012 to GBP30.9 billion.
The Olympics seemed to have had little impact on overseas travel with the number of those going abroad only up 0.3% at 19.3 million compared to a year ago.
Around the same amount of trips abroad were taken last year compared to the same nine months in 2011 (53.5m). The numbers showed a 3% decrease in visits to the USA by Brits, while European travel remained the same.
Olympics – numbers into UK down
When crunching numbers from the Olympic Games, the ONS found a 3% dip in inbound visits to the UK compared to the same period in 2011. Around 8.9m foreign tourists in total travelled to the UK during the period, with an estimate of 8% visiting to attend the Olympics in some form.
Some 470,000 overseas residents visited the UK to watch, work or participate in the Games and 215,000 had tickets although had other major purposes to visit the UK. Those who came for the Olympics spent double the average in the UK that they usually would at GBP1, 510.