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Britain receives 35.8 mln overseas visitors in 2015

Xinhua, February 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

A record of 35.8 million overseas visitors traveled to Britain in 2015, up four percent than the number in 2014, tourism authorities said Friday.

According to latest figure released by VisitBritain, Britain received a record 35.8 million visitors last year, which is the sixth consecutive year of growth.

Overseas visitors spending 21.8 billion pounds during their visits in Britain in 2015 in line with 2014's record breaking figure.

The number of visitors from the United States, one of Britain's most valuable tourism source market increased to 3.9 million, with an increase of eight percent over last year. Visitors from the EU15 markets also set the record last year, with 19.9 million visits and an increase of two percent.

Figures showed that record results were seen in the number of holiday visitors to Britain with 13.7 million visits, as well as those visiting friends and relatives, 10.5 million, in 2015. Visits for business increased six percent on 2014 with 8.7 million visits and people coming for other reasons, defined by the International Passenger Survey as miscellaneous journey purposes, was up five percent on 2014 with 2.9 million visits.

VisitBritain said that 36.7 million visitors are expected to arrive in Britain, while the spending by overseas visitors will reach 23 billion pounds in 2016.

"This growth is really fantastic news for the UK economy and shows we're on track to realise our ambition to grow international visits by more than 20 percent to 42 million by 2020, which could see an additional 4.5 billion pounds in visitor spend, as well as driving tourism across all our nations and region so its benefits are felt across the whole of Britain," said Patricia Yates, director of VisitBritain.

Tourism is Britain's seventh largest export industry and third largest service sector. The industry is also a major job creator, for example every 22 additional Chinese visitors that come to Britain create an additional job in the sector. Endit