London has always been vying for the top spot of the global tourism charts. In 2016, the city’s visitor numbers first hit record levels, at 19.1 million overseas arrivals, and projections suggest that number will have increased by 30 per cent by 2025.
The benefits to the city of this booming tourism market are clear: as well as strengthening the capital’s global reputation as open and welcoming, international tourism contributes £13bn annually to the economy and supports 309,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
As tourists continue to arrive in droves, however, the question of how to sustainably manage the influx – and make sure that the city continues to reap the rewards of its global popularity – will become more pressing.
London isn’t quite on a par yet with the Netherlands, where the country’s tourist board recently announced that it would effectively stop promoting Amsterdam as a destination for international travellers in order to ward off the ill-effects of over-tourism in the city. But, looking at that 30 per cent projected increase to the UK, there may be a need to begin future proofing against the same problem.
What if, rather than redirecting tourists away from the city centre when they arrive, authorities employed methods in advance: making tourists aware of the diverse neighbourhoods to explore and cultural experiences to seek out, right across London, which would influence their decisions on where to stay and visit before they even get here?
London First has just published the first ever borough-by-borough analysis of the impact of international visitor spending and accommodation in London. Anonymised and aggregated data provided by Airbnb and Mastercard has allowed us to see clearly who is visiting: where they’re staying, shopping, eating, drinking; when they’re doing it, and why. We can see trends in the behaviours of different nationalities – tourists from China, for example, like to stick in the West End, while German and Italian visitors are keener to explore markets and restaurants outside the centre.
Speaking of the West End, a huge amount of spending (unsurprisingly) goes on in London’s tourism core. But there’s also a substantial amount being spent by tourists across the rest of the city: a ‘halo’ of 19 boroughs, roughly covering travel zones 2-3, accounts for £2.8bn of spending, supporting more than 60,000 jobs. The data showed that growing tourism by just 10 per cent annually in this area would add £250m pounds to the economy and over six thousand jobs.
The economic benefits of encouraging more visitor spending in outer city neighbourhoods and far-flung districts is clear. But what’s also made obvious by the report is the potential for authorities to leverage this sort of data to sustainably grow tourism while safeguarding their cities against its negative effects, now and in the future. With a clearer picture of where, why and when international tourists are visiting, authorities can adapt their promotion, investment and national tourism policy levers, marketing individual areas to international visitors potentially before they even arrive.
Our research, while only a first step, shows that innovative data partnerships of the kind that produced these results are worth doing – and have potential to be adopted not just at a national level in the UK but by cities globally. Facilitating data exchange between public and private partners is not always easy but could be a critical tool for London, and any other tourist destinations looking to avoid inclusion on the growing list of European cities who are scrambling too late to protect their city centres, residents and small business owners against the double-edged sword of “too much tourism”. A three-pronged approach of data exchange, innovative analytics and digital transformation must be leveraged, to help cities better manage their growth challenges, improve efficiency and support economic development.
Matt Hill is programme director at London First.
