VisitBritain

Inbound visits and spend: quarterly, regional

See the latest annual estimates of the number of visits to the UK and total spend by inbound visitors, by UK region, based on the International Passenger Survey (IPS) released by the Office of National Statistics.

Released on:

17 May 2024

Next release:

22 July 2024

For further information, please contact research@visitbritain.org.

Note

NOTE: The Office for National Statistics have made improvements to the estimates for the UK’s nations and regions from 2023. This was also applied on previous data from 2019-2022. These improvements have led to small changes (<4%) across visits, spend and nights when comparing the old and revised datasets at the UK nations and regions level across 2019-2022. Larger changes may be seen when cross tabulating the data by other characteristics.

Report highlights

  • At the total UK level, visits and spend in Q4 2023 were still behind 2019 levels but showed growth vs 2022.
  • Most England regions saw a dip in visits Q4 2023 vs Q4 2019. Many also saw a dip in visits vs Q4 2022 as well, apart from London which showed the strongest recovery with visits up 3%. The majority of regions saw spend below 2019 levels, apart from London (on par with 2019), North West (+40%), East Midlands (+5%), and South West (+17%). North East and North West were the only regions to report growth vs Q4 2022.
  • Scotland saw 810,000 visits in Q4 2023, down 3% vs 2019 and down 6% vs 2022. Inbound visitors spent £648m in Scotland, 12% up vs 2019 but 10% down vs 2022.
  • Wales received 138,000 inbound visits in Q4 2023, down by 25% vs 2019 and down 19% vs 2022. Spend reached £67m, down by 47% vs Q4 2019 and down 29% vs Q4 2022.

Please note these are the final 2023 estimates. In the summary report, you can find further detail on English regions as well as full results for 2023. View the UK total summary for Q4 and 2023.

View the latest report

PDF

IPS Nations and Regions Summary 2023 (Published 17 May 2024)

Access the final estimates for 2023 in our summary report which covers headlines and distribution by UK nation and English regions.

Download (524.72 KB)

IPS Nations and Regions data, pivot tables 2019-2023 (Published 17 May 2024)

Download the data in Excel and explore the detail in the pre-built pivot tables.

Download (10.94 MB)

Explore the Nations & Regions inbound data in full

Use our visualisations to see this data in greater depth and clarity. Filter by inbound market, UK nation, UK region, season and purpose. 

About the survey

The International Passenger Survey (IPS) is a continuous survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It covers all major air, sea and tunnel ports, providing detailed information on the numbers and types of visits made by people travelling to and from the UK.

From January to June 2022, the ONS was unable to restart interviewing at Eurotunnel due to COVID-19 restrictions, so data for those travelling via this port is excluded for this time period. Interviewing at Eurostar was not affected by COVID-19 restrictions during this period. The ONS restarted IPS interviews at all ports from July 2022.

Please see About IPS for further information and the ONS.

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