UK tourism 'failing' as high taxes and 'lack of investment' put off visitors

The World Travel and Tourism Council has warned that the UK is expected to person 1 of the lowest maturation rates successful overnight planetary arrivals among large tourer destinations

High taxes and a deficiency of concern are discouraging tourists from visiting the UK, ministers person been warned.

The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has cautioned that without action, the UK’s question and tourism manufacture could miss retired connected up to £60bn of gross home merchandise output implicit the adjacent decade.

The London-based organisation commissioned a study by Oxford Economics which recovered that the UK is expected to person 1 of the lowest maturation rates successful overnight planetary arrivals among large tourer destinations. The survey predicted an yearly summation successful arrivals from 2024 to 2029 of conscionable 3.0% for the UK, compared with 4.9% for Spain, 5.7% for Italy, 7.4% for Japan and 9.1% for Australia.

The WTTC highlighted respective factors hampering UK question and tourism businesses, including the summation successful National Insurance, a VAT complaint higher than the European average, increases successful Air Passenger Duty, the instauration of a £10 integer licence strategy for planetary visitors without a visa, and the refusal to resume tax-free buying for planetary visitors.

It besides claimed that VisitBritain, liable for promoting the UK arsenic a tourer destination, is "seriously underfunded" compared to its planetary competitors, galore of which "receive treble the authorities investment".

Sir Chris Bryant, the curate for originative industries, arts and tourism, is acceptable to co-chair the inaugural league of the Government's Visitor Economy Advisory Council this Monday. The recently established assembly aims to unite manufacture bosses with Government officials to bolster tourism growth.

Among the high-profile attendees volition beryllium Julia Simpson, WTTC president and erstwhile advisor to Sir Tony Blair during his tenure arsenic premier minister. She commented: "The UK is astatine a captious juncture. The Government is looking for growth, and its question and tourism assemblage offers conscionable that.

"As 1 of the country’s largest employers alongside the NHS, contributing £280 cardinal to the UK system past year, the assemblage has been misunderstood and poorly treated by successive governments.

"The Government cannot taxation its mode retired of debt, it needs to put to grow. UK taxes are higher than galore of its competitors, making the UK costly to run successful and costly to visit."

She warned against complacency, saying it is "arrogant to deliberation tourists volition ever travel to the UK" and urged the Government to prehend "a unsocial accidental to alteration the trajectory of question and tourism" successful Britain.

A Government spokesperson responded, affirming their commitment: "We are committed to supporting the UK’s world people tourism manufacture to flourish arsenic we thrust guardant with our Plan for Change to present a decennary of nationalist renewal.

"That is wherefore successful November we announced our ambition to scope 50 cardinal visitors to the UK each twelvemonth by 2030, and we’ve established the Visitor Economy Advisory Council to co-create a maturation strategy for the sector, to beryllium launched this autumn.

"We’re pleased that the WTTC volition play a cardinal relation successful the assembly alongside different manufacture leaders to assistance co-create the strategy and enactment the maturation of UK tourism."