The Tourism Alliance [Alliance member] has presented the preliminary Interntional Passenger Survey (IPS) data for 2018 (released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS)) in its Monthly Inbound Update.
These figures overall indicated a downturn in inbound visitor numbers and visitor spend, with inbound visitor numbers down by 4% last year, while spend was down by a substantial £1.7bn (7%). While visitor numbers were down by 2-3% for the main categories of Holiday, Business and VFR travel, a major decline of 16% came in the Miscellaneous category, which includes short-term study.
The figures also show that in terms of where visitors are coming from, there was again a rather even decline of around 4% from most markets, although the North American market was static and the Non-Eu European market declined by 12%. Conversely, expenditure by UK residents taking overseas trips is shown to have increased by 2.2% in 2018, which indicates that despite the uncertainty, people are still willing to spend on holidays.