2025 inbound tourism forecast

• VisitBritain forecasts 44.3 million inbound visits in 2025, with these visitors spending £34.6 billion.
• Compared to 2024, this represents growth of 4% in visits and 6% in nominal spending (3% in real spending). VisitBritain estimates that visits and spending are 103% and 122% of the 2019 levels respectively, although spending is 95% of the 2019 level when you adjust for inflation.

Recent patterns: Official data from the International Passenger Survey was not available for 2025 at time of writing. The forecast used inputs from several alternative data sources to inform the visits forecast: Home Office data on arrivals by non-UK nationals at the border (available for the first half of the year); data from Visa on volumes of non-UK resident cardholders using their cards in the UK; data from Forward Keys and Amadeus on flight arrivals by non-UK residents.  Looking across these data sources suggests that inbound tourism was slightly higher in the first half of 2025 than in the first half of 2025. Inbound performance looks like it picked up in the third quarter.

Risks: Given the absence of IPS data at time of forecast, estimation of 2025 inbound performance is subject to more uncertainty than usual, especially for the value of spending. Risks for the end of the year are weighted to the downside, given the fragility of global economic conditions.

Data comparability: The Office for National Statistics made some changes to the methodology of the International Passenger survey in 2024. More details can be found on the ONS website. VisitBritain’s forecast for 2025 is designed to be comparable to the 2024 IPS numbers. Estimations of changes vs 2019 are VisitBritain’s modelling to enable comparison with previous years; the ONS are not endorsing comparisons with previous years. 

Next update: VisitBritain will revise its 2025 estimate and will issue a forecast for 2026 around the turn of the year.