UK Set to Slip in Tourist Ranking

With the rise of China, India, Russia and Brazil as tourism powerhouses and increased global competition, the UK looks to slip in terms of global competitiveness in the travel industry.

This was one of the conclusions at a World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) meeting on Friday in London and comes after the publication of its latest research on UK tourism.

The WTTC emphasized that better regulation, smarter taxation and a wider understanding of tourism´s economic standing in government and other agencies could lead to better growth.

Although the United Kingdom is the sixth largest nation globally in terms of tourism demand in 2006, its ranking is expected to slip to seventh by 2016, even though tourism activity looks set to grow by 3.1 percent per year up to this date.

The country´s global ranking in terms of capital investment and government expenditure in the tourism sector is also expected to drop a place in the next ten years, even though government expenditure is predicted to rise in real terms.

This is according to figures from the WTTC´s Tourism Satellite Accounting (TSA) research, which is undertaken annually for 174 countries with research partner Oxford Economic Forecasting (OEF).

The strength of the outbound tourism and travel market was highlighted as being one of the UK´s strengths in terms of value and volume.