Foreign visitors staying away

Published on Friday 15 August 2008 10:32

OVERSEAS visits to the UK have dropped by five per cent in the last quarter as consumers continue to scale back spending.

The quarter-on-quarter figures, published by the Office of National Statistics also show that in the full year to June, total visitor numbers were three per cent lower.

Visitors from the United States were down eight per cent – most likely the result of the weak dollar – while European visitor numbers dipped by six per cent.

Hotels and restaurants in the UK are the worst-performing part of the UK's service sector, contracting by 1.2 per cent in the quarter.

Tourism industry spokesman Stephen Dowd, chief executive of UKinbound, said: "People in Europe are now starting to get worried about their own economies."

He said that long-haul tourism is already "struggling very badly" but that arrivals from France, Germany, Italy and Finland have all dropped in the last month or so.