Wish You Were Here?

It’s official. A major new survey by Visit Britain - Britain’s national tourism agency, responsible for marketing Britain overseas - has confirmed that, when it comes to English cities foreign tourists most want to visit, only London can compete with with Liverpool.

SevenStreets has exclusively spoken to Paul Eastham, Head of Global Corporate Communications at Visit Britain, to crunch those all-important numbers.

Over the past four years, Foresight, Visit Britain’s monthly health-check on the inbound tourism sector, has been examining just how popular our major cities are - and how successful their tourism strategies have been in attracting those all-important overseas visitors.

Outside of London, Liverpool is the only English city in the top five holiday destinations: beating Manchester, Bath, York, well, everyone, really. And we’re not just talking 2008: the survey looked at tourism data from 2006 to 2009.

During these years, London and Liverpool form the English bread to a British tourism sandwich. And Scotland’s the meaty filling. As you’d expect, London sits at number one on the list, followed by Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness, and, in fifth place, our home city.

“Liverpool has leaped up the league table of cities that are admired, loved and visited by foreign tourists,” Paul Eastham told SevenStreets.

“The Renaissance has been under way for ten years but the surge in popularity received an enormous boost following the city’s starring role as Capital of Culture,” he says.

Of course, we know why we’re perfect for a city break. But what, SevenStreets wondered, does VisitBritain make of the findings?

“The city has successfully cashed in on its fabulous heritage of beautiful buildings, its world class football and the lure of its cultural and musical heritage, with its fame as the home of the Beatles, seeming to grow with time,” Eastham said.

“Liverpool’s other great advantage is that it’s within two hours’ reach of most of Europe by low cost airline, and with the pound at 1.20 Euros compared to €1.50 only three years ago, German, French and American tourists feel it’s a great destination for a weekend break,” Eastham adds.

We are, of course, a similar flying time to other, ahem, northern cities; many of whom continually claim to be more popular tourism destinations than Liverpool. But, thanks to this latest, authoritative set of figures, the truth is out: while other cities post impressive figures for hotel stays, these are often based on overnighting in hotels, or in-and-out business trips, which result in little uplift for the wider local economy.

And not just in hotels: tourism - and especially heritage tourism - has a wider impact on a city’s resurgence than almost anything else. It’s the UK’s fifth largest industry. Liverpool’s preeminence in a major UK industry again? We’ll take that, thanks very much. Even if it does mean getting run over by the Yellow Duckmarine.