Following one of Britain’s most celebrated years in recent memory, in which London hosted the summer Olympic games and Diamond Jubilee, its top tourism executive recently toured key markets in the Gulf to strengthen future UK visitor numbers from the region, according to VisitBritain’s newly-opened APME regional hub office.
Britain is a major beneficiary of outbound travel from the Gulf region with residents spending £881 million ($ 1.4 billion) in Britain during 2011, which is around five per cent of all spending. The UK received 459,000 visits from the GCC region in 2011, a 19.8 per cent increase on 2010.
VisitBritain also reports that by 2020 there is potential for the annual number of visits to Britain from the UAE to be 40 per cent up on the record year of 2009, which welcomed 344,400 visitors. The latest statistics show that UAE visits are up nine per cent.
In recent years, specifically 2006 through 2011, Saudi, Qatar, and UAE are three markets that have shown an outstanding increase in visitor numbers at 60 per cent, 59 per cent and 36 per cent respectively, with Qatar and Kuwait topping the spend per night list, outshining all other countries.
VisitBritain chief executive officer Sandie Dawe said, “This past year’s iconic events placed Britain in the spotlight like never before, as we showed the world just how GREAT we can be in so many different areas, from sport and culture to food and music.”
“We look forward to making 2013 an even more memorable year, to include greeting nearly one million additional international visitors to Britain.”
Dawe also inaugurated the new APME hub office now based in Dubai.
The UK already welcomed 31 million visitors from across the world who spent £18 billion ($29 billion) last year, making the industry the third-largest earner of foreign exchange. Tourism, a major part of the UK economy, contributes £115 billion ($187 billion) to UK GDP, and provides employment for 2.6 million people – around nine per cent on both measures.