Domestic tourism is travelling within the same country for either leisure, business or medical purposes. It usually involves using transport. An example would be an American family travelling from one State to another to visit Disneyland. (LittleHotlier, 2024). Inbound tourism is when tourism comes into the country. On an annual basis, inbound tourism to the UK is worth £127 billion. In 2019, in the UK, there was a total of £28.45 billion spent by inbound tourists. £24.78 billion of this was in England. (Visit Britain, no date, b). Domestic tourism is worth 77% of tourism in the UK. The remaining 23% is made up by inbound tourism. (Visit Britain, no date, b). From 2017 to 2019, the top 5 UK holiday destinations were London, Scarborough, Manchester, York and Blackpool. (Visit Britain, no date, a). In 2022, the most popular destinations (in order) for inbound tourists were London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool. (Visit Britain, no date, c). According to Statista, in 2019, City holidays were the most popular, followed by beach holidays being the second most popular. City holidays were worth 46% of tourism and beach holidays were worth 41% of tourism. (Statista, no date). In the UK, in 2022, there was a significant difference in the amount of inbound tourists to domestic tourists. In terms of domestic tourism, the number of overnight visits made were 126 million which resulted in a total of 383 million nights. If we compare this to inbound tourism, we can see that the figures are much lower. There were 31.2 million visits made to the UK from overseas visitors. Although this is much lower than the number of domestic tourists, it is still an increase in the number of inbound tourists from 2020 and 2021. The number of nights that inbound tourists spent in the UK in 2022 was around 263 million, which is roughly 120 million lower than domestic tourists. The statistics for inbound tourists’ reasons for visiting in 2022 were as follows; 39% of people visited for a holiday, 38% came to visit friends or relatives, 16% visited for business reasons and 7% of inbound tourists visited for other reasons. (UK Parliament, 2023).
References
LittleHotlier (2024). Domestic Travel: how to target domestic tourism. Available at: https://www.littlehotelier.com/blog/running-your-property/domestic-travel/ (Accessed 12 December 2024).
Statista (no date). Preferred types of holiday in the UK in 2022 – Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/480258/types-of-holidays-taken-in-the-uk/ (Accessed 12 December 2024).
UK Parliament (2023). House of Commons library. Available at: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06022/SN06022.pdf (Accessed 20 October 2024).
Visit Britain (no date, a). England domestic overnight trips and day visits: subnational data. Available at: https://www.visitbritain.org/research-insights/england-domestic-overnight-trips-and-day-visits-subnational-data#:~:text=The%20top%20five%20most%20visited,%2C%20Manchester%2C%20Blackpool%20and%20York. (Accessed 12 December 2024).
Visit Britain (no date, b). Inbound Tourism: The what, why & how. Available at: https://www.visitbritain.org/sites/ind/files/2023-06/chapter_3_-_inbound_tourism_-_the_what_why_how_-_2nd_edition_-_pdf_accessible_compressed.pdf (Accessed 12 December 2024).
Visit Britain (no date, c). Inbound visits and spends: trends by UK town. Available at: https://www.visitbritain.org/research-insights/inbound-visits-and-spend-trends-uk-town (Accessed 12 December 2024).