Overseas travel and tourism: Jan 2017

Visits to the UK by overseas residents, visits abroad by UK residents and spending by travellers, using provisional passenger traffic data.

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Contact:
Email Giles Horsfield

Release date:
24 March 2017

Next release:
21 April 2017 (provisional)

1. Main points

  • Overseas residents made 2.9 million visits to the UK in January 2017; this is an increase of 11% when compared with January 2016.

  • UK residents made 4.6 million visits abroad in January 2017; this has increased by 9% when compared with January 2016.

  • Overseas residents spent £1.5 billion on their visits to the UK in January 2017; this is an increase of 15% when compared with January 2016.

  • UK residents spent £2.6 billion on their visits abroad in January 2017, a 5% increase when compared with January 2016.

  • In the 3 months to January 2017, overseas residents made 22% more visits to the UK for holidays than the same period a year ago.

  • In the 3 months to January 2017, UK residents made 8% more holiday visits abroad than the same period a year ago.

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2. Things you need to know about this release

Estimates contained in this bulletin are produced from responses provided by international passengers arriving in and departing from the UK, sampled on our International Passenger Survey (IPS).

Responses to the survey are scaled up to represent all passengers using information on total international passenger traffic for the reporting period.

Estimates are based on interviews conducted when passengers end their visit. Any visits commencing in the reported month but not completed until later are not included in estimates for the reported month.

The reported spend for visits include any spending associated (excluding fares) with the visit, which may occur before, during or after the trip.

Parts of the bulletin refer to countries visited abroad. It should be noted that if a UK resident visited more than 1 country on a trip abroad, the country recorded as visited in this publication is the country that was visited for the longest period.

Estimates are subject to sampling error, and confidence intervals are provided to help you interpret the estimates (see background note: Accuracy of IPS estimates). Further guidance is available about the quality of overseas travel and tourism estimates.

Overseas travel and tourism monthly estimates are revised during the processing of the quarterly dataset and again during the processing of the annual dataset. This bulletin contains provisional overseas travel and tourism estimates to and from the UK for January 2017. Revised, final estimates for 2015 were published in Travel trends 2015 on 20 May 2016.

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7. What’s changed in this release?

Country definitions

In order to harmonise the International Passenger Survey (IPS) country definitions with other government departments some country groupings have been changed for 2017. These mainly effect the definition of European areas.

Before 2017, definition of the EU included the small countries of Monaco, San Merino, Andorra and the Vatican City. These are not members of the EU but do have an agreement with the countries they are contained within which are full members of the EU. These countries will now be defined as ‘Europe’.

From January 2017 countries that have historically been part of Europe for the IPS publication such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been moved to “Other Countries”. This is in line with the National Statistics Country Classifications (NSCC).

Graphs

From January 2017 seasonally adjusted graphs will be replaced with non-seasonally adjusted graphs to show the seasonal fluctuations in the data.

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8. Quality and Methodology

The International Passenger Survey Quality and Methodology Information document contains important information on:

  • the strengths and limitations of the data and how it compares with related data

  • uses and users of the data

  • how the output was created

  • the quality of the output including the accuracy of the data

The International Passenger Survey Methodological Information outlines definitions and sample methodology.

Accuracy of IPS estimates

Figures for the most recent months are provisional and subject to revision in light of (a) more accurate data on passenger figures becoming available at the end of each quarter and (b) additional passenger data obtained at the end of each year.

International Passenger Survey (IPS) monthly estimates are revised in line with the IPS revisions policy. The revisions policy is available in the IPS quality and methodology report, to assist you in the understanding of the cycle and frequency of data revisions. You are strongly advised to read this policy before using this data for research or policy-related purposes.

Planned revisions usually arise from either the receipt of revised passenger traffic data. Unplanned revisions are made to correct errors to existing data, identified later in the quarterly and annual processing cycle. Those of significant magnitude will be highlighted and explained.

Revisions to published monthly IPS estimates can be expected at the following times in the normal overseas travel and tourism publication schedule:

  • monthly estimates for the current reference year will usually be revised and statistically benchmarked across the quarter, following the publication of the quarterly estimates which that month falls within

  • monthly and quarterly estimates for the current reference year will be revised in the survey year’s annual data release (Travel trends)

  • monthly estimates for the full calendar year will be statistically benchmarked as part of the annual data processing and the monthly estimates for the year will then be replaced in the monthly release, with the benchmarked estimate following publication of the annual report (Travel trends)

All other revisions will be regarded as unplanned and will be dealt with by non-standard releases. All revisions will be released in compliance with the same principles as other new information. Please refer to our guide to statistical revisions.

Seasonally adjusted figures are presented for the main figures in the publication. This aids interpretation by identifying seasonal patterns and calendar effects and removing them from the unadjusted data. The resulting figures give a more accurate indication of underlying movements in the series.

The estimates produced from the IPS are subject to sampling errors that occur because not every traveller to and from the UK is interviewed on the survey. Sampling errors are determined both by the sample design and by the sample size: generally speaking, the larger the sample supporting a particular estimate, the proportionately lower its sampling error. The survey sample size is approximately 20,000 per month. However, as the intensity of the sampling varies at each port, figures of a similar magnitude will not necessarily have the same percentage sampling error.

Accuracy of the estimates is expressed in terms of confidence intervals. The confidence interval is a range within which the true value of a proportion lies with known probability. For example, the 95% confidence interval represents the range into which there are 19 chances out of 20 that the true figure would fall had all passengers been sampled. This is obtained as plus or minus 1.96 the standard error.

Confidence intervals for quarterly and annual estimates are provided in our relevant overseas travel and tourism publications.

One indication of the reliability of the main indicators in this release can be obtained by monitoring the size of revisions. Table 4 records the size and pattern of revisions to the quarterly IPS data that have occurred over the last 5 years to the following main seasonally adjusted estimates:

  • the number of visits by overseas residents to the UK (GMAT)

  • the number of visits abroad by UK residents (GMAX)

  • earnings made from overseas residents in the UK (GMAZ)

  • expenditure abroad by UK residents (GMBB)

Note that estimates are subject to revision between the monthly statistical bulletin and the quarterly publication, and again when Travel trends is published. Revisions result from more accurate passenger figures being made available. More information about the IPS revisions policy is available in the Quality and Methodology Information report. The most up-to-date and accurate estimates for all published months can be found in the latest edition of the Overseas travel and tourism monthly statistical bulletin.

Note that, although data by the International Passenger Survey (IPS) feed into the calculation of migration statistics, the overseas travel and tourism publications do not provide any information relating to international migration.

Other analyses

For general questions about the IPS and requests for user-requested data analysis (a service governed by our Income and charging policy), please get in touch using the contact details accompanying this release.

Telephone: +44 (0)1633 455678

Email: socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk

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Contact details for this Statistical bulletin

Giles Horsfield
socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1633 455731