20 | Bed & Breakfast News | March - April 2016 Tourism in Facts & Figures
. . . the latest statistics Records set for inbound tourism to the UK in 2015
New figures out last month show that 2015 set a new record for inbound tourism to the UK with 35.8 million visits, four per cent up on 2014 and the sixth consecutive year of growth (totaling 20% in five years). VisitBritain foecasts 36.7 million visits in 2016.
Visitors spent £21.8 billion in the UK last year, in line with 2014’s record breaking figure, and this is predicted to reach almost £23bn in 2016.
VisitBritain launched its largest international marketing campaign for 2016 last month in Brazil, France, Germany and the USA.
Tourism Minister David Evennett said: “Tourism is one of the UK’s fastest growing industries, and attracting more international visitors to our shores is not only important for the sector but for the nation’s whole economy.”
VisitBritain Director Patricia Yates said:
“This growth is really fantastic news for the UK economy and shows we’re on track to realise our ambition to grow international visits by more than 20% to 42 million by 2020, which could see an additional £4.5 billion in visitor spend.”
But beware the budget boom
Analyst Liz Hall of PwC, said: “Growth in the travel and hospitality sector is expected to continue to outpace the wider economy”
– but, ominously for B&Bs perhaps, Hall added: “the budget boom continues with around 3,000 new rooms in the budget category - on top of the 3,700 new budget rooms which opened in 2014 and 2015 - and budget
rooms comprise about 20% of all rooms in London and 33% of the rooms in the active pipeline. That’s a lot of budget rooms to fill.”
Tourism is Britain’s seventh largest export industry and third largest service sector. 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. Inbound tourism is worth more than £26 billion to the UK economy.
Tourism Statistics 2016
Opposite, the chairman of the Tourism Alliance (of which the B&B Association is a member) introduces the latest 2016 Statistics, which follow over the next four pages.
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