Unit 4 part C
This part of the unit I will be assessing the size of tourism in Britain. Firstly I will discussing Museums contribution towards Tourism. Britain's museums and galleries are among the very best in the world. There is no other country in the world with such a powerful range of museums, this tell us how much of a strong reputation Britain holds of having Excellent museums, Museums and galleries are key drivers of British tourism and play a significant role in attracting visitors and in building the British brand overseas. The British Museum has been established for 262 years being established for this long will mean they will be recognized and generally accepted. This museum is ranked 4th in the world, this is very impressive because compared to the other countries such as USA and China who are big nations and for the UK an island to be among them is great. According to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) The London British Museum is the most popular visitor attraction in the UK, we know this because they have a record of 6,695,213 total visits a year (2014). Which is the highest figure recorded out of 40 museums in the UK. The London British Museum attracted 3.8 million visitors from abroad in 13/14 compared to attracting 3.6 million visitors from abroad in 12/13, as you can see there was an increase of 200 thousand visitors and this could suggest that there is increased demand from people abroad wanting to go to London British Museum in 2013-2014. Total Number of visitors coming to the museum in 13/14 is 6.8m and 3.8m of those are visitors from abroad but they didn’t state how many domestic visitors have visited the museum so I have concluded that that the domestic visitors coming to the museum in 13/14 is 3m (6.8m – 3.8m = 3m) this would mean that a lot of the London museums visitors and demand are mainly from abroad. In 13/14 the number of unique website visits for the London British Museum is 35.3m compared to having unique website visits of 27.3m in 12/13, this tells us that London. The type of visitors that come to the museum are normally from different category’s because you get the researchers that love to go to museums to understand more about historic facts and add it to their knowledge, you also get the normal visitors such as domestic visitors who come to the museum to be fascinated about the history there and also schools design trips for students to come to these museums so that it can help them with their subjects such as geography and history. The thing I think makes the London British Museum one of the best in Europe is that they have over 8 million objects and it cost nothing to go there, it’s completely free, which is great for anyone who is struggling to get into other museums who charge, this is the perfect alternative for them to go to because of their excellent reputation. According to Visit Scotland, they have provided us statistics about overseas travel and tourism in 2013. Scotland have received total trips of 6.32 million in 2013, The reasons for these trips could be holidays for people abroad, business meetings and people looking for an adventure or going to museums and for me this is the most popular reasons for why people from abroad visit the UK. Visits to the UK by overseas residents have dropped compared to the same month in the previous year for the third consecutive month in February 2015 to 2.1 million visits, however visits to the UK in the last 12 months are still 4% higher than in the previous year. Compared from last year this is a vast improvement as more people visited the UK in 2015 this shows increased demand from abroad wanting to come to the UK. These improvements of people visiting in the UK have proved to be a success with estimated earnings from all visits to the UK grew by 2.5% from £2.7 billion in 2013 to £7.4 billion in 2014. This shows how influential Tourism is to the UK economy in terms of generating money and increasing the UK reputation of being a good country to visit and stay. Overseas visitors to the UK made 3% more visits to friends and relatives in the twelve months to February 2015, than they did in the same period last year. From March 2014 there were 9.81 million visits, 3% more than the previous 12 months and just 1% below the VFR record set in the twelve months to February 2008. UK tourism industry employment has grown cumulatively at nearly double the rate of non-tourism industries with growth rates of 5.4% and 2.4% respectively between 2009 and 2013. Of this growth, the food and drink serving industry has grown at the fastest rate with growth of 8.8% over the period, or an increase of 99,900 in employment. This shows that the tourism in the UK contributes a lot towards the economy in terms of employment, creating jobs for the UK and improving the standard of living for people also. This also show us that the tourism sector have interrelationship with the food and drink sector, relying on each other in terms of revenue and popularity.
Normally when we associate tourism to the UK we think of London because they have vast amount of attractions there, but outside London we have England’s top attraction which is Chester zoo. It is said that Chester Zoo have the largest visitor number attraction outside London for two years running at a figure of 1.4m, 430,000 more visitors than London zoo. This show the consistency that Chester zoo have required and show their competitiveness against notable zoo’s such as London zoo.
The UK tourism sector is very important towards the UK economy and Britain rely on this sector to make the nation favourable towards incoming tourist. England's long history and pervasive culture spread worldwide through the English language and colonialism make England a popular tourist destination, also the may reason for the British museum success globally.