More tourists than ever visited the UK during 2005 despite the July London bombings according to figure recently released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It appears that in 2005 a record total of 30 million tourists came to the UK, spending £14 billion pounds during their stay. This was despite the fact that a relatively small number of American’s stayed away, with a 3% drop in the number of visitors from the US during 2005. There were still some 4 million US visitors during 2005 though, and these were highest spending group, but visitors from America have not recovered since the bombing of the Twin Towers bombings in 2001.
It does seem that the July bombings did have an effect on visitor numbers though. If you analyse the visitor numbers in detail, there was a 13% increase in the number of visitors during 2005, but in the quarter from July to September the rise was lower at just over 4%.

London was the most popular destination for visitors to Great Britain, with over half of visits involving a stay in London. The next most popular cities were Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham.

Detailed statistics for tourism in the UK during 2005 are available from the ONS website.