Dress in style for UK tourism

London's attempts to vie with Milan as fashion capital of Europe helped attract a record number of Italian visitors to the UK last year, according to the British Tourist Authority (BTA).

Italians are known to take fewer overseas holidays than other Europeans, but more than a million visited the UK in 1998, 10% more than in 1997.

It can be no coincidence that shopping will form the focus of one of the BTA's campaigns for the new millennium. It will also promote business tourism, the youth market, sports and cultural tourism.

Other European countries contributing record numbers of visitors included Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Switzerland (whose citizens spend £70 a day compared with a European average of £50). This helped offset declines from key markets such as France, Germany and Belgium, blamed on the strong pound, the World Cup and poor weather.

The USA remained the key transatlantic market, contributing £2.5b, but there was a 24% surge in Latin American visitor numbers thanks to a rise in visits from the wealthy elite and from students wanting to improve their English. Canadian trips dropped by 1% as the currency lost 15% in value against sterling.

The bruised Japanese economy undermined business travel from Japan, and had a knock-on effect throughout Asia. However, tourist visits from New Zealand grew by 21%, from South Africa by 8% and from the United Arab Emirates by 3%.

Despite the global economic downturn, the strong pound and tough competition from overseas, more and cheaper flights helped UK tourism boost visitor numbers by 1% to 25.7 million in 1998, while the amount tourists spent climbed by 3% to £12.6b.

The share taken by accommodation (£4.2b) and eating out (£2.6b) declined slightly to the benefit of the shopping, entertainment and travel sectors. The lion's share, as before, was taken by England, especially London.

by Angela Frewin.