In April 2013 the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport launched VisitBritain’s long term tourism growth strategy for Britain.
From 22 May we will be working to update all of the data and documents on this page following the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revision of the International Passenger Survey (IPS) data for 2009-2018 and the released detailed 2019 data. Please be patient as we update these pages or contact the VisitBritain research team if you have any questions- VB/VEResearch@visitbritain.org. Thank you.
This ambitious strategy - Delivering a Golden Legacy: a growth strategy for inbound tourism 2012-2020 (PDF, 4.53MB) - sets out what Britain can do to ensure that international tourism delivers the largest economic benefit possible and how marketing and policy objectives can be aligned. It aims to attract 40 million international visitors a year, spending £31.5 billion, by 2020.
We also conducted a major piece of work, producing assessments of Britain’s competitive position in each of our 21 priority markets − identifying opportunities for and barriers to growth.
This work identified four key elements which together are drivers of future success:
None of this is within the gift of any single organisation. This is a strategy for Britain – with the travel industry, government departments and agencies united behind a clear long-term ambition for growth.
Our aim is to work in partnership, so that organisations across the public and private sectors can align to deliver tourism’s full economic growth potential over the remainder of this decade.
The private sector has a key role to play. in 2018/19 we secured £11.5m in cash and marketing in-kind support, through our partnership activity. This included:
This strategy sets out an ambitious goal for Britain. It will require an even greater level of cooperation across Government, the UK and overseas tourism industries and the national tourist boards in order to ensure that Britain is fit to compete and succeed in the global race for tourism.