Inbound visits and spend: trends by UK town

In 2024, the top five most-visited UK towns (for overnight visits by inbound visitors) were: 

• London 

• Edinburgh

• Manchester

• Birmingham

• Liverpool

Note: 2024 data is badged as ‘official statistics in development’ due to the changes in the IPS methodology from Q3 2024:

• Overseas Travel and Tourism data collected under the new approach shows a lower proportion of total visits via sea transport attributed to overseas residents. This change could have affected business visits (particularly lorry drivers) and visits from certain Eastern and some Western markets. ONS is continuing to investigate these differences as part of the ongoing development and refinement of their new design and methods.
• The base sizes for towns visited depends on respondents reported destinations, which are subject to random variation in sampling. This introduces high variability, especially for towns that are less frequently visited (i.e. smaller sample sizes). As part of the ONS review into the new methodology, the ONS are examining sampling variability and weighting at the country level which may also affect town-level estimates.