Fewer tourists visit UK despite £45m campaign

An advertising campaign costing £45m intended to lure more foreign tourists to Britain has failed so far, figures suggest.

The Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, insisted last week that the British Tourist Authority campaign, launched in May, had sparked great interest and that more than 400,000 potential visitors had logged on to the campaign website or called hotlines.

Despite this, the number of foreign tourists visiting Britain in May 2002 fell, the British Incoming Tour Operators Association (Bitoa) said. Its figures showed that the UK had 4.8 per cent fewer visitors in May 2002 compared with the same month last year.

May 2001 had also shown an 18.2 per cent dip compared with May 2000. But tourism executives hoped that spring 2002 figures would show a substantial increase compared with 2001, when the tourist trade was blighted by the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Bitoa said forward bookings in May 2002 had also fallen, by 7.9 per cent. A spokesman said the association was disappointed by the revelations, adding: "Clearly there is a long way to go to recover lost markets." Encouragingly, ,there had been a 2.4 per cent increase in forward bookings the previous month, compared with April 2001.

As part of the high-profile campaign, Tony Blair addressed prospective tourists in a television advertisement, which was aired in the United States in mid-May. It has also been broadcast in the other target markets – Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland.