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Which cities are the UK’s tourist hot spots?

New short-term lets data reveals the concentrated nature of the UK's urban tourism industry. These findings are interesting in light of ongoing discussions around tourist taxes, highlighting that although cities should be given the power to implement this levy it would only be relevant in a handful of places.

Blog post published on 24 April 2024 by Oscar Selby

By counting visits to Expedia, Booking.com, and Airbnb rentals between July and September 2023, the ONS have recently released data on the UK’s short-term lets market. This novel dataset reveals some fascinating insights into the nature of the UK’s tourism industry – and its distribution across its 63 cities.

Brits prefer the countryside while foreign visitors choose cities

The first thing of note is that most visits to short-term lets were to non-urban destinations (56 per cent) – with the most visited location being Cornwall.

This preference, against city visits, was mostly driven by UK residents. They accounted for the majority of short-term renters and 64 per cent of them chose to travel to rural or coastal places (see Figure 1).

Non-UK residents preferred urban trips, with 62 per cent choosing cities. However, because of their smaller representation in the UK’s short-term lets market, this was not enough to sway the balance in favour of cities.

With the caveat that this data was collected over the summer holidays, when non-urban visits are likely more favorable than usual, it indicates that the majority of the UK’s tourism industry is concentrated outside of UK cities.

Figure 1: UK residents prefer non-urban trips

London dominates but Edinburgh is most popular relative to size

The vast majority of people who did visit cities only went to a select few. Of those who stayed in short-term lets, 17 per cent went to London. And, as a proportion of those who visited cities, 37 per cent went to the capital.

If we widen these figures out to the top ten most visited UK cities, then the numbers become even more concentrated. A third of all visits to short-term lets were to the UK’s top ten cities, which accounted for 73 per cent of all visits to urban destinations.

After London, Edinburgh comes in second, followed by Manchester, Brighton, and Birmingham. On the other end of the spectrum, Blackburn comes in last places for visits, followed by Basildon, Wigan, Mansfield, and Barnsley.

Figure 2: Tourism is heavily concentrated in London and a select few other cities

After accounting for population size, city ranking changes quite substantially (see Figure 3). Most notably, London falls out of the top ten, moving into eleventh. Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Leeds all follow suit.

Edinburgh takes the top spot – by some margin – while York, Blackpool, and Bournemouth all enter the top five under this adjusted measurement. On the other hand, the bottom ten cities change very little.

It should be acknowledged that although Edinburgh would likely retain its top spot regardless, these figures will be slightly inflated because this data was collected over a time period that includes the fringe comedy festival.

Figure 3: After adjusting for city size Edinburgh takes pole position and London doesn’t make the top ten

Top Ten Cities		Bottom Ten Cities
PUA	Visits per 1,000 residents	PUA	Visits per 1,000 residents
Edinburgh	240	Blackburn	2
York	141	Wigan	4
Brighton	132	Basildon	5
Blackpool	101	Mansfield	6
Bournemouth	81	Barnsley	6
Oxford	80	Wakefield	6
Cambridge	80	Warrington	7
Liverpool	60	Preston	8
Belfast	60	Doncaster	9
Cardiff	59	Chatham	10

International visitors are even more concentrated in a small number of UK cities

As a share of the total, Edinburgh receives the highest proportion of international visits at 68 per cent. London comes in second, then Oxford, Belfast, Glasgow, and Cambridge. These are the only five cities that receive a majority of their visitors from abroad. Blackpool comes in last on this metric, followed by Telford, Middlesborough, and Burnley.

On the bottom end of the spectrum though, these rankings fail to distinguish between places like Blackpool that received a relatively high number of overall visits but a smaller proportion of international residents compared to domestic, and places like Telford that received very few overall visits but even fewer from outside the UK.

Figure 4: Edinburgh receives the highest share of international visitors

Cities should be allowed to implement a tourist tax, but it will only be relevant to a select few cities

These findings are interesting in light of ongoing discussions around tourist taxes or ‘visitor levies’ as they are increasingly being referred to as. Legislation is currently passing through the Scottish parliament and is due to be presented to the Welsh parliament, on allowing local authorities to put such charges in place.

There are currently no discussions to do so in England, although Manchester has come up with an innovative workaround by using an accommodation business improvement district to charge £1 a night for a city centre stay. This solution has been a relative success as the scheme has managed to raise £3 million in its first year.

As is common in other international cities, all places should be able to adopt an equivalent levy. Westminster should follow what is going on in Wales and Scotland by bringing forward legislation for England too. What the data here shows though, is that implementing such a policy would only be relevant in a handful of places as the UK’s urban tourist industry is quite heavily concentrated in only a select few cities.

Further questions on the nature of the UK’s tourism industry will be investigated in more detail via the Centre for Cities upcoming research programme on the topic.