Foreign spend in Britain booms

International visitors have spent an extra £2.5 billion in Britain during the last four years according to new data released by VisitBritain. 

This beats the target set for it by the UK Government in 2011 by more than half a billion pounds, and means that every £1 invested in VisitBritain’s activities has resulted in an overseas visitor spending £21 in Britain.

VisitBritain has delivered an additional £630 million, thanks to its continuing role as a partner in the cross-UK Government GREAT campaign.

Overall inbound tourism, Britain’s third largest service export and one of its fastest growing, was worth more than £26 billion to the UK economy in 2013. The industry is also a major job creator, for example every 22 additional Chinese visitors that come to Britain create an additional job in the sector.

VisitBritain chair Christopher Rodrigues said: “We have contributed to another record year for inbound tourism numbers and spend. Inbound tourism is clearly a key economic driver, creating growth and jobs right across Britain.

“We will continue to deliver award-winning campaigns, build partnerships to extend our impact, make it easy for people to get here by building air route connectivity and supporting the development of a bookable, integrated transport system which is easy for the international customer to understand and use.

“Everything we do is motivated by the goal to add value to the inbound tourism industry,maximising the taxpayers’ investment in tourism, and driving economic growth across the nations and regions ensuring that the economic benefits of tourism are felt across the whole of Britain.”

While London continues to appeal to international visitors, recent numbers show that international tourism growth is now faster in the nations and regions. In 2014 visits to Wales were up 7% on 2013 (from 869k to 932k);   Scotland 12% (from 2.4m to 2.7m); England 5% (13.5m to 14.2m – excluding London) and London 4% (17.4m to 18.8m).

VisitBritain also re-iterated its ambition for international visits to Britain to grow by more than 20% during the next five years to 42 million by 2020. This could see an additional £4.5 billion in visitor spend.

The agency will be working to ensure that its major markets for regional exploration – Europe, the USA and Australia – continue to deliver, as well as competing for the new growth markets of tourism such as China, Brazil and the Gulf.

VisitBritain said the first seven months of 2015 are on track towards this target, breaking all previous records for inbound tourism numbers, with more than 20 million visits to Britain from January to July – a 3% increase compared to the same period last year. The North American market continues to show recovery with an increase of 15% during June compared to the previous year, with the number of visits 4% higher in the first six months of 2015, compared to the start of 2014.