Growth in Sports Tourism forecasts

VisitBritain comments today on figures released by the Office for National Statistics, showing that inbound tourism has grown across all of Britain’s nations in 2013.

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

• There was a record number of Holiday visits at 12.726 million, an increase of 6.4%, with spending at £8.448bn, up 12.0%.

• Business visits stood at 7.945 million, up 7.0% but still down on the 9 million achieved in 2006. Spending by those visiting for Business reached £5.014bn, up 11.4% on 2012.

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.