Inbound visits and spend: annual, UK

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.

Please note due the ONS’ ongoing planned improvements to the travel and tourism statistics:

• 2025 estimates are badged as ‘official statistics in development’ and estimates are subject to future change as further improvements to the methods are introduced. The ONS are not endorsing comparisons between the old methodology (pre-July 2024) and new methodology (post July-2024), and therefore comparisons shown in this report are only for H2 2025 vs H2 2024 (both under the new methodology). The ONS are assessing options for measuring discontinuities from the old and new time series including options for adjusting the back series (please refer to the latest ONS article on improvements).
• VisitBritain has included modelled growth rates to provide some level of annual comparison for 2024 and 2025 and longer term trends to show how inbound tourism would have progressed under the old methodology. These suggest that aggregate visits and spend numbers are lower under the new methodology.
• The new methodology from July 2024 includes pseudo records for freight (lorry drivers) who are not captured via data collection at the ports, as they were in the old methodology. These pseudo records represent those who travel to the UK via sea (at Dover) and tunnel (at Eurotunnel). These records are included in the total inbound estimates at the UK, GB and total business visits level, and, for freight via Eurotunnel only, records are also included in the Europe total. Therefore, freight records are not available at any other breakdown including at the market or nations/regions level, so the sum of these will not tally up to the totals where the pseudo records are present.
• The ONS continue to explore the feasibility of incorporating Northern Ireland data from NISRA into the new methodology. These estimates are included in the UK total but any estimates below this level are at the GB level only (i.e. exclude Northern Ireland). 
• VisitBritain notes that in comparison to other data sources, estimates for some long-haul markets (particularly some Asian markets), appear lower under the new methodology from July 2024, and so users should bear this in mind when interpreting results.
• The ONS are also undertaking a review of the historical data, so previous years data may be subject to marginal change.
• See the latest IPS data publication and update on improvements to the travel and tourism statistics on the ONS website. 

For further information, refer to the About the IPS page.