A snapshot of tourist accommodation in London September 25th, 2025 by Jubair Ahmed London is the world’s third-most visited city, attracting roughly 21 million international visits in 2024 (more than half of all international visits into the UK), generating £17 billion in spending. Given the scale of these numbers, it is important for policymakers to understand if the supply of visitor accommodation that houses tourists (hotels, bnbs, Airbnb…
London’s Economy Today editorial – February 2025 February 27th, 2025 by Daryl Rozario, Ali Ögcem, Gordon Douglass, and Sixia Zhang UK sees slow growth at the end of 2024 The UK economy grew in the final quarter of 2024 according to data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in February 2025. This showed that real GDP is estimated to have grown by 0.1% in Q4 2024, after not growing at all in Q3…
London’s Economy Today editorial – May 2024 May 31st, 2024 by Daryl Rozario, Mike Hope, Sixia Zhang UK GDP grows strongly in first quarter of 2024 After two quarters of mild negative growth of -0.3% in 2023 Q4 and -0.1% in 2023 Q3, the UK grew strongly by 0.6% in 2024 Q1, reports the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Year-on-year growth was a more modest 0.2%, and over the last two years…
London’s Economy Today editorial – March 2024 March 28th, 2024 by Daryl Rozario, Gordon Douglass, Sixia Zhang UK economy experienced growth in January The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published monthly UK GDP data for January 2024 earlier this month. This data showed that the UK economy grew by 0.2% in January, which follows on from a monthly decline of 0.1% in December 2023 (Figure 1). Figure 1: Both the services sector…
London’s Economy Today editorial – February 2024 February 29th, 2024 by Daryl Rozario, Gordon Douglass, Mike Hope and Sixia Zhang UK enters recession at the end of 2023 Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in mid-February showed that the UK had entered a recession in the second half of 2023. After contracting by 0.1% in Q3 2023 GDP fell by a further 0.3% in Q4 2023 (Figure 1). A contraction of GDP…
The impact of ending tax-free shopping on the UK and London economies September 28th, 2023 by Adam Yousef Introduction It is widely known that the tourism sector contributes considerably to the UK and London economies. Few events illustrate the extent of this impact better than the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a series of restrictive lock-down measures that impacted severely on domestic and international tourism to London and the rest of the UK.…
Post-pandemic international visitors to London March 30th, 2023 by Mike Hope Last Summer there was a significant recovery in international tourism after it nearly fell to nothing during the pandemic. This supplement reports on what is driving those trends, and how they differ from pre-pandemic trends. GLA Economics also publishes tourism forecasts for both domestic and international visitors. This analysis will feed into the development of…
