England’s Historic Cities contribute £8 billion to visitor economy!

Figures released today during English Tourism Week by England’s Historic Cities - a partnership that brings together England’s premier heritage locations to maximise the potential of their visitor economies - show a total of £8 billion was generated by tourism and leisure businesses from the heritage cities within the partnership in 2019 - a rise of more than 25 percent from 2018.

Data* also showed overall visitor numbers increased by 12.4 percent from the previous year to 118 million, supporting the equivalent of nearly 83,000 full time jobs in the sector, and over 11 million visitors stayed in England’s Historic cities as part of a holiday or short break generating a total economic impact of £2.31 billion – an increase of 12.8 percent from 2018.  

Melanie Sensicle, chair of England’s Historic Cities said: “Whilst this data was obtained pre-pandemic and the upward positive trends obviously did not continue into 2020, the figures show the phenomenal potential of our heritage destinations and highlight the significant value of their contribution to the visitor economy and as well as the capacity they have to increase regional spread of visitors.

This summer we are launching our new cross-marketing plan which will see the cities promoting each other to the domestic consumer for the first time.  We want to encourage people to visit our cities safely and believe that collaborate marketing can contribute to the recovery of our businesses in 2021.”