Wales’s popularity as a visitor destination for overseas tourists is on the up, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.
The International Passenger Survey reveals that visits and spend from overseas tourists was up 4% in 2013, with 884,000 international visitors to Wales. These visits generated spend of £353m, an increase of 2% on 2012. This represents around 3% of all overseas visits to the UK.
In total, 42% of visitors to Wales were holidaymakers, which contributed 43% of spend, an increase of 13% from 2012. And business spending on holiday visits increased 27%.
And of the international visitors coming to Wales, 68% of were from Europe, 14% from North America and 18% from the rest of the world.
Tourism Minister, Edwina Hart, welcomed the results: “Added to the extremely positive figures from the domestic market for 2013 these figures for the overseas market give us a full picture to show that 2013 was an excellent year for tourism in Wales. The overseas market represents 10 % of visitors to Wales and we get a 3% share of overseas visitors to the UK.
“The UK market will remain the key market for Wales, and we will continue to work with VisitBritain and partners to increase our market share of overseas visitors. The tourism strategy for Wales has committed to working with three main overseas markets which have the strongest opportunities for growth, these are Germany, USA and Ireland.”
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