Our achievements 2022/23
We generated an additional visitor spend of £673 million as a result of our activities from April 2021 to June 2022.
In 2022/23 our ‘Welcome to Another Side of Britain’ international campaign took place in Q4 21/22 and Q1 FY22/23 in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. With an investment of £16,790,111, we generated an incremental value of £190,593,728 for the British economy. This is equivalent to 193,712 additional international visitors, and over 3,500 jobs created
Business events
In 2022, our Business Events Growth Programme approved 27 applications for business events in 12 cities with a potential value of £57 million.
Our ExploreGB Virtual event saw 4,000 online B2B meetings take place between UK suppliers and international travel trade, to promote their product or destination.
English tourism
The VisitEngland Awards for Excellence 2022 achieved an AVE of £626,000 and reached 12million on social media.
Our free Taking England to the World workshop training received 100% positive feedback from participants; in 2022 the training has helped 419 businesses learn how to reach international visitors.
Download our 22/23 Annual Review (PDF, 66MB) to see more results.
Tourism performance pre-COVID19
In 2019, the UK tourism industry was thriving. As Britain’s third largest export industry, the tourism sector contributed £127 billion to Britain’s economy, around 9% GDP.
Since 2010 it had been the fastest growing sector when it comes to employment, accounting for over three million jobs. The sector was projected to grow 3.8% a year by 2025 — faster than the digital industry, and was one of a select number of industries supported with a tailored sector deal in 2019, recognising its importance to the economy.
In 2019 inbound tourism was setting new records with inbound visitors spending £28.4 billion, up 7% on inbound spending in 2018. Visits were also up (1%) in 2019, with 40.9 million visits to the UK recorded — just short of the record-holder in 2017.
Domestic tourism in 2019 was also strong, seeing a return to normal following the weakened 2018 — a year beset by bad weather that affected the number of holidays taken. The total number of domestic overnight trips taken in England increased 1.7% to 99.1 million with British residents spending £19.5 billion.
Research
View our England research section for a wealth of market intelligence, research and insights into tourism in England.
See our COVID-19 Consumer Sentiment tracker for latest insights on propensity of UK residents to travel domestically.
See our Inbound COVID-19 Sentiment Tracker in partnership with Visit Wales, VisitScotland and London & Partners.
See the latest forecasts for domestic and inbound recovery.
View our inbound research and markets sections to find more facts and figures on international tourism to Britain.
