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VisitBritain

Inbound visits and spend: quarterly, regional

See the latest annual estimates of the number of visits to the UK and total spend by inbound visitors, by UK region, based on the International Passenger Survey (IPS) released by the Office of National Statistics.

Released on:

24 January 2024

Next release:

17 May 2024

For further information, please contact research@visitbritain.org.

Report highlights

  • England: Overall, England welcomed 9.4m visits in Q3, down 10% vs Q3 2019 with visitors spending £8.2bn in England, up 7% vs Q3 2019.
  • London: London received 5.4m visits (-12% vs Q3 2019). Visitors spent £4.7bn in Q3 2023 (up 7% vs 2019).
  • The Rest of England received 4.7m visits (-13% vs Q3 2019) and spent a record £3.5bn (up 10% vs 2019).
  • North West led the recovery rate vs 2019 for visits in both Q3 and year to date, with West Midlands lagging.
  • In both year to date and Q3, London and Rest of England are displaying similar recovery rates vs 2019 for visits and spend.
  • Scotland: Scotland continued to post the strongest recovery into Q3 2023 (up 14% vs Q3 2019) with 1.4m visits. Spend reached a record £1.5bn (up 43% vs Q3 2019).
  • Wales: Wales received 348,000 visits in Q3 2023, down 8% vs Q3 2019 whilst spend reached a record £201m in Q3 2023, just above 2019.

In the summary report, you can find further detail on English regions. View the Total UK results.

View the latest report

PDF

IPS Nations & Regions Summary Q3 2023 (Published 24 January 2024)

Access the latest regional data in our summary report which covers headlines and distribution by UK nation and English regions.

Download (380.62 KB)

IPS Nations & Regions data 2019-Q3 2023 (Published 24 January 2024)

Download the data in Excel and explore the detail in the pre-built pivot tables.

Download (4.96 MB)

Explore the Nations & Regions inbound data in full

Use our visualisations to see this data in greater depth and clarity. Filter by inbound market, UK nation, UK region, season and purpose. 

About the survey

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.

From January to June 2022, the ONS was unable to restart interviewing at Eurotunnel due to COVID-19 restrictions, so data for those travelling via this port is excluded for this time period. Interviewing at Eurostar was not affected by COVID-19 restrictions during this period. The ONS restarted IPS interviews at all ports from July 2022.

Please see About IPS for further information and the ONS.