Lost worker vs. tourism expenditure in the Central Activities Zone (CAZ) during the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the pandemic, the loss of expenditure in London’s Central Activities Zone (CAZ) due to both workers staying at home and tourists being unable or choosing not to visit has had a major impact on the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors.

This analysis seeks to investigate the relative importance of these two cohorts to the CAZ. We estimate local expenditure from commuters to the CAZ in 2020, in a scenario with and without Covid-19. We compare this difference to the anticipated drop in inbound and domestic tourist expenditure in 2020, which we estimate by adjusting forecasts for London produced by Visit Britain.

We estimate a £10.9bn loss in tourism expenditure in the CAZ (£3.5bn domestic and £7.4bn inbound) compared to a £1.9bn loss in expenditure from commuters to the CAZ (£1.4bn of this expenditure is from commuters from London and £0.5bn is from commuters outside of London).