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VisitBritain

2024 inbound tourism forecast

The annual VisitBritain forecast for the volume and value of inbound tourism to the UK is issued towards the end of each year. It is revised mid-year, after the final official inbound statistics are released. This page was last updated 20 December.

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Summary

  • 2023: VisitBritain’s estimate for the full year 2023 is 37.8 million inbound visits to the UK with £31.7 billion spent, 92% and 112% of 2019 levels respectively (spend 92% of 2019 when adjusted for inflation). This would set a record for spending in nominal terms.

  • 2024: VisitBritain forecasts 39.5 million visits and £34.1 billion spend, 97% and 120% of the 2019 levels respectively, although spend would be 96% of the 2019 level when you adjust for inflation. Compared to 2023, this would represent growth of 5% in visits and 7% in nominal spend (4% in real spend).

Forecast charts

VisitBritain

VisitBritain 2024 inbound tourism forecast

VisitBritain

VisitBritain 2024 inbound tourism forecast

Further information about the forecast

Recent patterns: Official data from the International Passenger Survey is available to September at time of writing. This shows that visits to the UK were 8% down on 2019 (though 30% up on the same period in 2022) and the value of visitor spending set a new record, 10% up on 2019 in nominal terms (and 23% up on 2022) although 9% down on 2019 in real terms (i.e. taking inflation into account), tracking visits. In recent months, however, the recovery hit a plateau with visits in the 3 months July-September slipping to 89% of 2019 levels and August itself weaker albeit compared to a strong August 2019. A range of other data sources was used to inform recent months, including flight bookings data, which suggest that visits have remained slightly behind 2019 levels.

Markets and journey purposes: European inbound tourism to the UK is forecast to recover to 95% of visits and 116% of spend (in nominal terms, i.e. not adjusting for inflation), which equates to 25.8 million visits and £14.4 billion. Long haul markets are forecast to recover to 101% and 123% – 13.7 million and £19.7 billion – which is faster than Europe in the aggregate although with variation within this, as inbound tourism from the Americas has returned rapidly but East Asia slower. Find the latest market level data from the International Passenger Survey here. Different journey purposes have also recovered at different rates. Comparing January-August 2023 to 2019, holiday visits are down 6%. Visits to friends or relatives have recovered fastest and are up 3% on 2019; these visitors usually stay longer but spend less than holiday visitors. Business visits are still down 29%, although higher-spending MICE visitors are recovering faster than more routine business trips.

Visitor spending: To date, inbound spending has been recovering faster than visits in nominal terms – so spend per visit has increased – but has been approximately tracking visits in real terms i.e. when adjusting for inflation. Beneath this straightforward headline pattern are a range of differing trends. Looking at the first half of 2023, for which we have detailed data, allows us to explore spending patterns in depth. While visits were 6% down, nights stayed were 7% up so average length of stay was 14% higher than 2019. However, spend per night was down 10% when adjusting for inflation. Some of this is due to visits to composition effects e.g. visits to friends or relatives (which have higher length of stay but lower spend per night) recovering fastest. There are differences in these trends between short and long haul visitors. Length of stay and real spend per night are closer to pre-COVID for European visitors; for long haul visitors length of stay is still much longer than normal and real spend per night much lower. The forecast assumes that long haul visitors will ease to a more normal pattern. Taken together, these patterns suggest that overall spending is likely to track visits in real terms, i.e. the spend outlook is approximately the visits trend plus inflation. Competing effects are broadly balancing each other out. The model assumes that spend per visit will gradually transition from recent patterns to an indexation of 2019 plus inflation for each of Europe and long haul.

Economic drivers: The global economy has slowed in recent months. This, plus the slowdown in the in the recent inbound data, is the main reason why visits and real-terms spending are not forecast to quite recover to 2019 levels immediately. The Eurozone economy has been sluggish throughout 2023 and is forecast to remain slow in early 2024, picking up in the second half of the year. The US economy performed well in 2023 but consumer spending is forecast to be much weaker in 2024. The forecast assumes that global cost of living pressures gradually ease throughout the rest of 2023 although not so dramatically as to trigger a significant additional boom in consumer spending.

Assumptions: it is assumed that COVID will not present fresh challenges to international travel and that restrictions will not be re-imposed, and that markets where travel is currently slow will continue to recover. It is also assumed that there will be no major disruptive global or UK events that will significantly affect inbound tourism. The forecast assumes that from spring 2024, visits will gradually return to 2019 volume levels by early 2025. This is premised on the assumptions that the slower global economy will dampen the recovery rate but that the trajectory will be gradually upwards, that the slowdown will be mild and short-lived, and that there are no unforeseen shocks that will surprise on either the upside or downside.

We will issue a revised forecast for 2024 in the middle of the year following the publication of the final inbound statistics for 2023 by the Office for National Statistics.