1. Inbound research & insights
  2. Inbound tourism performance
  3. Quarterly data by UK area

Quarterly data by UK area

The quarterly data from the International Passenger Survey is available below.

This shows the overall volume and value of visits to the UK by overseas residents, with the option to filter by the nations or regions of Britain. Visit the relevant section in the site for the monthly data, annual trends and specific market information.

The International Passenger Survey (IPS) was suspended on 16 March 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic until the start of 2021. The ONS have made every effort to produce high-quality estimates for the periods when IPS data is not being collected but have not been able to produce a full set of results. See the 2020 inbound page for more information.

The 2021 data is ‘incomplete’ as Eurotunnel data was unavailable for Q1 to Q3 but modelled for Q4 and Dover data was only included from Q3. Pseudo records for the Irish land border were also removed in 2021. More info can be found on the 2021 inbound page.

For 2022, Eurotunnel data was modelled for the first half of the year and the latest data can be found on the monthly and quarterly pages. Interviewing at Eurostar was not affected by Covid-19 restrictions in 2021 or the first half of 2022. The ONS restarted IPS interviews at all ports from July 2022.

Due to the above, no data from Q2 2020 onwards is available on the interactive chart below. However, you can access the data for 2021 and 2022 via our excel pivot tables hosted on the quarterly page.

Read more about 2020 inbound data, 2021 inbound data, 2022 quarterly data as well as the latest monthly data for 2022.

Expenditure data in the CSV file excludes spending of nil-nights transit visitors to the UK and visitors departing directly from the Channel Islands.

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An important note about the survey's methodology

  • Visitors who spend at least one night in the UK during their trip are asked where they stayed.  This information can then be aggregated to look at the number of visits, nights, and spending in different regions, cities, and towns.
  • Information at the regional level is often based on very small sample sizes, and as such should be treated with extreme caution, and used solely as an indicative estimate.  The International Passenger Survey is a national survey, and is not designed to be statistically robust at the regional level.
  • Visitors often spend nights in more than one location during their trip.  This means that when looking at ‘visits’ values for different regions will not sum to the national total – for example a visitor from the US making a single visit to the UK could be counted as making a ‘staying visit’ to London, to Edinburgh and to Chester.
  • The data includes a ‘Total UK’ category, representing the true national total for visits.
  • ‘Double counting’ is not an issue when looking at visitor nights or spending.
  • No information is recorded about where visitors arriving/departing the UK on the same day travel during their trip, nor is information recorded about where ‘staying visitors’ go for ‘day trips’.  If a visitor from France spends four nights in Edinburgh they may take a day trip to St Andrews and another to Stirling, but this information will not be recorded in the International Passenger Survey.

Related resources

We have a wealth of other resources on inbound visitors to Britain: