09.02.05
British tourism enjoyed a record year in 2004, smashing previous records for visitor numbers, but visitor spending went down because of the mix of visitors (the high spenders stayed away).
The latest statistics from the Office for National Statistics show that 27.5 million visitors came to Britain in 2004 – up 11% on 2003 and 7% higher than in 1998, the previous record year.
But despite the buoyant visitor numbers, factors such as the unfavourable rate of exchange for US visitors and the tendency for visitors to take shorter breaks, meant that the spend per visit was down on previous years. So although total overseas visitor spend in 2004 reached £12.8 billion, up 8% from 2003, it has only just drawn level with 2000.
Tom Wright, Chief executive of UK promotion organisation Visit Britain, said the British tourism industry could not afford to be complacent on the back of strong visitor numbers. Visit Britain plans to target new markets this year including the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malaysia and Thailand to encourage more visitors to Britain.
Similar campaigns targeted at China, Poland, Russia and South Korea in 2004 were deemed a success as visitor numbers from outside Western Europe and North America grew most last year.
While visitor numbers from North America increased 9% to 4.35 million, and from Western Europe increased 10% to 17.8 million, the largest growth was in visitors from ‘the rest of the world’, which increased 20% to 5.4 million, overtaking visitor numbers from North America.
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