United Kingdom Tourism

The world wars dampened the growth of the tourism sector, although after World War II the government began putting measures in place to increase tourism, recognising its political and economic influence.[10] By 1987, the World Tourism Organization estimated 3.4% of the UK's GDP came from tourism.[10] More recently, budget airlines and cheap accommodation has caused almost continuous year-on-year growth. In more recent times, terrorist attacks in the UK such as the 7/7 bombings in 2005 have an expected negative impact on the tourism industry.[citation needed] The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 caused three consecutive years of the number of visitors from overseas decreasing for the only period between 2002 and 2017.[11]

The COVID-19 pandemic affected tourism in the United Kingdom. In March 2020, the government decided to impose restrictions on all non-essential travel (both domestic and international) which are currently still in place.[13] It was reported that in the month of April Heathrow Airport was expecting 6.7 million passengers, but only 200,000 arrived which is roughly equivalent to a normal day.[14] In April 2020, professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers expected that the worst affected sectors in the U.K. such as transport, hotels and food service could drop by at a minimum 15% or in the worst-case scenario by 40%.[15]

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As the country surpassed 100,000 COVID-19 related deaths, a VisitBritain report in January 2021 discussed the effects of the pandemic on domestic tourism within the UK in 2020, citing a significant reduction in spending, for an estimated decline of 62% over the previous year. The forecast for 2021 suggested that spending would increase by 79% over the previous year and that "the value of spending will be back to 84% of 2019 levels" by the end of 2021. The forecasts were based on predictions about the easing of travel restrictions and an increase in consumer confidence.[19]

The same VisitBritain report provided the following estimate for "inbound tourism" in 2020: a "decline of 76% in visits to 9.7 million and a decline of 80% in spending to 5.7 billion". The forecast for 2021 indicated an estimated "11.7 million visits, up 21% on 2020, but only 29% of the 2019 level". Some 6.6 billion would be spent by inbound tourists, "up 16% on 2020 but only 23% of the 2019 level". An increase in the number of visits was expected as 2021 developed, but that would start slowly and tourism was not expected to come "even close to normal levels" during the year.[20]

On 5 April 2021, BBC News published an update on domestic tourism, indicating that travel restrictions were expected to be loosened during that month, at least for travel within England, Scotland and Wales. No announcement had been made as of early April by Northern Ireland.[21] The tourism authority also indicated that there was a plan for the UK to loosen restrictions on international travel on 17 May, both inbound and outbound, but it was premature to predict whether those changes would actually commence at the expected time.[22]

On 6 April 2021, CNN published an update as to the tourism situation, particularly for readers in nations. Any visitors from "red list" countries were still not allowed to enter unless they were UK residents. "There's still not much to do in the UK right now ... although this lockdown is now being eased some restrictions will likely be in place until the summer", the report predicted, with June being the most likely time for tourism from other countries to begin a rebound.[23]

Some restrictions on hospitality and domestic tourism were loosened in England on 12 April 2021; pubs and restaurants were allowed to open their outdoor facilities; non-essential stores opened; families were allowed to travel within England "in self-contained accommodation" and travel between Wales and England was fully permitted. Restrictions regarding tourism were not lifted in Scotland and Northern Ireland; in addition to permitting travel to and from England, Wales permitted non-essential retail stores to open.[26]

In April 2022 same day as Ireland, Finland, Malaysia, Singapore, and other countries, COVID-19 tourism impact in the U.K. was officially ended by early April 2022 as the country ahead of endemic phase.

Domestic tourism remains the biggest component of tourist spending in the UK, with 2008 expenditures totalling 21.9 billion, according to VisitBritain.[28] The national statistical agency also estimates that there were 126 million trips made in 2009.[28] The busiest period for domestic travel in the UK is during bank holidays and the summer months, with August being the busiest.

In 2011, VisitBritain launched GREAT, one of a 100 million marketing campaign, promoting the United Kingdom through culture, heritage, sport, music, countryside, food and shopping.[49] The campaign has successfully reached over 145 countries and united both the public and private sectors to generate growth and jobs.[50] Overall, inbound and domestic marketing have generated 1 billion in additional visitor spend, of which, 800 million can be attributed to the GREAT campaign.[51]

This paper assesses the structure of VFR (visiting friends and relatives) tourism in the UK between 1989 and 1993 in relation to four main issues: VFR expenditure patterns, VFR destination choices, the timing and duration of VFR trips, and VFR demographic travel propensity by social class, age and life cycle. The results suggest the need for important modifications or extensions to previous assumptions about the VFR category in terms of its value, destination features, its temporal distribution and the profile of its main participants. A number of hypotheses are offered as the basis for replication studies and further research. The analysis is based on a disaggregation of VFR tourism from five annual United Kingdom Tourism Surveys (UKTS) carried out continuously between 1989 and 1993, which provide the first five-year run of data on domestic tourism in the UK based on an unchanging and consistent methodology. The data represents the largest, standardised longitudinal data set on VFR tourism yet presented in the literature. The UKTS results are compared with VFR results derived from published studies of VFR travel elsewhere.

The occurrence of terrorist attacks not only leads to the death of many innocent citizens but also make a disastrous impact. Its happening put people into a worrisome situation so as to interfere tourism development of a nation or a city. Because tourists are afraid of these horrible things happening to them, they dare not travel there. At present, there are quite a lot of articles studying British tourism, which are mainly related to economy, culture, policy, the development of a specific city or a certain type of tourism destination. There are quite many articles focusing on the relationship between crises or terrorist attacks and tourism (see Gil-Alana, Mervar, & Payne, 2015 ; Narayan, 2008 ; Liu & Pratt, 2017 ; Raza & Jawaid, 2013 among many others). There are also some researches focusing on the impact of terrorist attacks on a country or region (see Goodrich, 2002 ; Pizam & Fleischer, 2002 ; Pizam, 1999 ; Chu, 2008 among many others). However, there is still no research conducting into the relationship between terrorism and tourism in the United Kingdom. Studying the relationship between them is helpful to policy-making and minimizes the impact of terrorist attacks on tourism destinations.

Figure 1 shows the trend of the number of inbound tourists. The tendency of tourist arrivals in the United Kingdom is an upward trend throughout all these years. There were significant decreases only in 1991, 2001 and 2008-2009. Why these years have a downward trend? It may be influenced by several global issues, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the September 11 attack in 2001 and the global financial crisis in 2008. However, there are continuous terrorist attacks, no matter big or small, happening in both the United Kingdom and the European continent from 1986 to 2017. Do these incidents have any impacts on tourism in the United Kingdom? This paper will carry out further research on this problem.

The range of research on tourism is wide, including cultural tourism ( Richards, 2018 ), sustainable development ( Tlkes, 2018 ), volunteer tourism ( Wearing & McGehee, 2013 ), urban tourism ( Cohen & Hopkins, 2019 ) and so on. There are also many researchers devoting themselves in exploring factors having impacts on tourism demand (see Dritsakis, 2004 ; Chaisumpunsakul & Pholphirul, 2018 ; Stauvermann & Kumar, 2017 among many others). Dritsakis (2004) used the data of tourist arrivals, real income per capita, transportation cost and the real exchange rate of demand as key variables to examine tourism demand for Greece. Chaisumpunsakul & Pholphirul (2018) found international trade as an important factor affecting inbound tourism demand. Stauvermann & Kumar (2017) included economic growth and the increase in labor productivity as factors that promoting tourism demand. Saha & Yap (2014) recruited a set of panel data from 139 countries from 1999-2009 to analyze whether political instability and terrorism as factors affecting tourism. They characterized that the political instability factor is much more significant than one-off terrorist attacks. While the two factors working together can seriously damage the tourism demand. Terrorist attacks actually increase the tourism demand in those much safer countries.

There are a lot of research papers based on British tourism. The themes of British tourism mainly focus on tourist behavior, tourism demand, tourism impact and so on in recent years (see Thurnell-Read, 2012 ; Cater, 2017 ; Curtin, 2013 ; Jarvis, Weeden, & Simcock, 2010 among many others). Some researchers focus on tourism behavior, such as the behaviors of British single men traveling to Poland ( Thurnell-Read, 2012 ). Cater (2017) discuses the travel pattern, travel motivation of tourists who travel by motorcycles, and its potential economic impacts. Some researchers explored tourism demand, for instance, Curtin (2013) studied the non-consumption wildlife tourism market in the United Kingdom and believed that it still had great potential. As long as the destination does good marketing, it can attract more tourists. 006ab0faaa