Luxury Travel

High spending visitors in the UK

The vast majority of the 37.9 million visits by overseas residents that the UK welcomed during 2018 will have been by those on ‘average’ incomes, but it is interesting to examine which source markets generate the highest spend per visit and the highest spend per night.

It makes sense to look at both these metrics as some markets may display a high spend per visit but this is thanks to an above average length of stay or an atypical journey purpose distribution.

Table 1 below covers the top seven markets in terms of spend per visit during 2018 while Table 2 deals with spend per night high fliers. Both tables feature several Gulf countries, with Bahrain holding first spot in both the country spending the most on average per visit (£2,778) and also per night (£225). This is well above the average for 2018 of £604 per visit and £86 per night. Kuwait holds the second spot for spend per visit (£2,589) and also features in the top list for spend per night (£180).

Saudi Arabia also features in both lists, due to their high standard of living, especially amongst international travellers. Qatar and China both have high average spend per visit, but not per night and this is due to a high average nights per visit in both cases. For both China and Qatar the average number of nights per visit is 16, well above the average of 7, which inflates the overall spend per visit. Iceland features on the average spend per night (£222) but only stay on average 3 nights per visit so average spend per visit (£710) is lower than the markets in Table 1 above, although it is still higher than the 2018 UK average spend per visit of £604.

Only countries with a base size larger than 30 have been included