In the three months of December, January and February, the latest quarter available, UK residents’ visits abroad rose by 4% year-on-year, the Office for National Statistics has reported. Spend was also up with an increase of 7%.
The ONS, however, recorded a fall in visits overseas in February, which dropped 2% to 4.17 million. But this figure, once seasonally adjusted, showed a 3% rise to 5.94 million, with spending during these visits abroad in February up 12% to £3.88 billion.
Giles Horsfield, the ONS’s head of research, International Passenger Survey, told TTG the fall in actual overseas visits should not be seen as alarming. “Holidays are down a little, whereas VFR [visiting friends and relatives] went up,” he said.
“It is only a small drop in a monthly figure, so we need to be careful not to interpret too much.
It’s come after a period when figures were going up and up. It could be that the value of the pound is having an effect.”
The ONS found that the 13 countries that joined the EU after 2004 (such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania among others) had the greatest increase in the number of visitors from the UK, with a 14% rise.
Meanwhile, when looking at reasons for visiting, business trips fell by 6% from the same period in the previous year but visits for all other reasons increased, such as holidays, sports tourism and VFR.
The figures also illustrate how tourism to the UK is faring. The number of visits to the UK by overseas residents in February 2017 was 2.3 million, the same as in February 2016. However, overseas residents spent £1.2 billion in the UK in February 2017, an increase of 6% compared with the previous year.
In the three-month period, visits were up 8% year-on-year from 7.4 million to 8 million. Visits by residents of all areas of the world increased, with the exception of the 13 countries that joined the EU after January 2004, which decreased by 1%, perhaps illustrating concerns about visiting the UK in the wake of the Brexit vote.
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