Spending shoots up as visitors made 30m trips to UK last year
MORE than 30m visits were made to the UK during 2013, a six per cent boost from the same figures in the previous year.
In total, new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show that 32.9m trips were made to the country last year. Visitors spent £21bn while staying in the country, a 13 per cent improvement on 2012.
Meanwhile, nearly twice as many trips were made by UK residents outside of the country: 58m visits abroad were taken, three per cent more than the year before, with seven per cent more spent, hitting a total of £34.6bn.
Business trips and holidays to the UK both made up the same portion of the increase in travel, growing by seven per cent against the previous year. Visits to friends and relatives saw a more modest increase, up by five per cent over the same period.
Trips from and to the rest of Europe make up the majority of both visits in and out of the UK, typically accounting for around three quarters of the travel in either direction.
In December alone, there were actually 47,000 fewer visits made to the UK than in the same month of 2012. However, it is still a significant improvement on December 2011, with 248,000 more visits to the UK taken.
Last year was also the first in which each individual month saw more than 400,000 trips recorded from the ONS other countries category, which excludes the common starting points of north America and Europe.