American tourists stay away from Britain as recession starts to bite

The American tourist — a familiar sight in the streets of London, Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and Edinburgh — is in danger of becoming an endangered species.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that Americans made only 3 million visits to Britain last year — down from 3.6 million in 2007 — as the economic slowdown took its toll.

It meant that, for the first time in many years, Americans were not the most frequent visitors to Britain. They were overtaken by the French, who made 3.6 million visits, and the Irish, who made 3.1 million visits.

The figures reveal the extent to which the recession has strongly affected the tourism industry. The total number of overseas visits fell last year for the first time since 2001, the year of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain and the September 11 attacks.

The ONS reported that there were 31.9 million visits last year, compared with 32.8 million in 2007. It said that the decline was particularly marked during the last quarter, when visits fell by 13 per cent on the same period in 2007 and the number of business visits was down by a quarter.

Spending by American visitors fell by 12 per cent last year to £2.2 billion, a comparatively strong showing partly because of the strength of the US dollar against the pound. The figures reveal that Americans remain the biggest spenders among tourists.

The rise in visitors from France and Ireland does not appear to be due entirely to the strength of the euro against sterling last year, since there was a drop in visits from other countries in the eurozone. The number of visits to Britain from Germany fell by 14 per cent to 2.9 million, while the number of visits from Spain dropped by 11 per cent to 2 million. There was also a slight drop in the number of visits from the Netherlands.

The other countries in the top ten of those providing visitors were Italy, Poland, Belgium and Australia. Unsurprisingly, given the economic problems in their country, the number of visits to Britain by people from Iceland fell by 43 per cent, while the number of visits from China dropped by 24 per cent. There was a similar fall in the number of visits from Japan.

VisitBritain, which promotes the UK as a tourism destination, said that the fall was understandable. A spokesman said: “The decline in visitor numbers and spending in 2008 was certainly not unexpected. The figures illustrate the continuing challenges of maintaining Britain’s popularity as a destination as the global economic downturn began to bite and in the face of increasing competition from rival destinations. There are positive signs for the start of 2009.”

The most popular destinations apart from London — which accounted for 14.8 million overnight stays — were Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge.

The statistics reveal that, for every foreign visitor coming to Britain last year, more than two Britons went the other way. About 69 million visits abroad were made by Britons during the year, although this was down by 0.6 per cent on 2007.

Spain and France remain the favourite destination for British visitors, accounting for nearly two in five of all trips, despite the number of visits to France falling by 3.1 per cent during the year to 10.9 million.

The other most popular destinations for Britons travelling abroad were the US, the Irish Republic, Italy and Germany. Portugal also proved popular, moving above both Greece and the Netherlands, while there were big increases in the numbers of British visitors to Mexico, Egypt, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates.

The World Tourism Organisation published data revealing that Britain was the sixth-most-visited country in the world, behind France, Spain, the United States, China and Italy.