Know Before You Go: Guidance for travel in Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Christopher Rodrigues, Chairman of VisitBritain commented on the strong results: “We are delighted with these final results for the key post-Olympic year. Every single nation across Britain has seen an uplift in visitor numbers and, even more importantly, there have been substantial increases in spending for one of Britain’s largest export industries.
“VisitBritain encourages visitors to explore all our nations and regions so I am particularly pleased that spending growth across the Rest of England (outside of London) and Scotland is faster than for London, which itself had a record breaking year.
“These strong results underpin the forecast that inbound tourism will continue to grow by over 6% a year across the rest of this decade, making a significant contribution to the UK’s balance of payments and continuing to offer rapidly growing employment opportunities.
“Tourism is, and always will be, a major part of the British economy.”
Tourism sectors
VFR (Visit to friends and relatives) visits increased 4.2% to 9.327 million but this falls short of the record established in 2008 of 9.727 million. VFR visits generated £4.524bn in spending in 2013, up 14.6% on the year before.