UK suffers biggest drop in foreign visitors in nearly a decade

Britain has experienced the biggest fall in foreign visitors since 2009, according to the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics.

Visitor numbers in the three months to June dropped to 10.038 million, a 7.7% decrease from 2017, when the UK attracted a record number of foreign tourists.

Much of last year’s increase was driven by a dramatic slump in the value of the pound that occurred in the wake of the Brexit referendum, especially against the euro and US dollar.

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The latest figures “show Britain has been unable to sustain these gains, with the segment of highly price-sensitive visitors possibly having been exhausted,” Reuters says.

Tourism, the most common reason for a visit, was down by 8%, business trips fell by 15%, while visits to see friends and family rose by 6%, it reports. The biggest drop was seen among North American visitors (10%) and European visitors (8%).

Amid a strengthening pound, total spending by foreign visitors fell by 10% compared with a year earlier to £5.8 billion.

Overall, Brits spend more on visits abroad than foreigners spend in the UK, the Daily Telegraph reports. In the period from April to June 2018 British tourists spent £11.6bn abroad, almost double the amount spent by international visitors to the UK.