According to UK national statistics, last year the UK welcomed 37.61 million visitors with at least one overnight stay increase of 4.13% compared with the previous year. The city of London accounted for 50.7% market share, confirming its position as the leader in Europe with 19.06 million tourists (+2.6%). The United States, France and Germany are the three biggest outbound markets to London, with 2.32 million arrivals (+8.3%), 1.99 million (-3.8%) and 1.47 million (+5.1%) respectively.
Only three other UK cities attract more than a million tourists a year: in 2016, Edinburgh attracted 1.69 million tourists, followed by Manchester with 1.19 million and Birmingham with 1.12 million.
25% of travellers come to the UK on business
Business travellers to the UK accounted for a quarter of all foreign arrivals. Last year, these travellers generated a total of record of 9.187 million arrivalsbeating the all-time record of 9.02 million business trips in 2006. Among the countries generating the most arrivals for business reasons, three countries are neck and neck: Poland, Germany and France, with the total number of arrivals for each of these countries fluctuating around 850,000 a year.
London remains top business destination with 3.62 million arrivals, followed by Birmingham with 594,000 international arrivals, Manchester with 389,000 arrivals and Liverpool with 193,000 business visitors.
If we analyse the means of access to the UK for EU business travellers, air travel is still the most popular, accounting for 54% of all arrivals, followed by sea travel at 26% and the Channel Tunnel with a market share of 20%.
The decline in the pound was reflected primarily in the number of overnight stays in 2016. Last year, they rose by 5.1% to 111.058 million, compared with 108.321 million the previous year. The same trifecta of overnight stays. The United States alone generated 12.435 million overnight stays, France 8.371 million and Germany 6.333 million.
No negative impact from acts of terrorism
But the effect of the devaluation of the pound is becoming more pronounced. According to statistics provided by London & Partners for the first quarter of this year, the British capital saw its tourist arrivals jump by 15.6%, or 4.48 million visitors compared with 3.87 million for the same period in 2016. Visitor arrivals from the European Union were up by 8.6% to 2.8 million. Spending, which had stagnated last year, was up by 17.6% to £2.7 billion compared with £2.3 billion a year earlier.
London's popularity was recently confirmed by the analysis of ForwardKeysa consultancy which analyses trends in airline bookings and anticipates passenger movements. The terrorist attacks in London in June have so far had only a limited impact on the market. very limited impact on demand. While bookings were up 16% for July and August before 3 June compared with the same period in 2016, this fell back to 12% after the attack on London Bridge. After a drop in bookings in the two weeks following the events in London and Manchester, demand recovered at the same rate as before.
According to Olivier Jager, CEO of ForwardKeys, the downward pressure on the pound has certainly helped to mitigate the impact of the acts of terrorism, as London remains one of Europe's most attractive destinations.
