The first chart illustrates the number of British individuals visiting the US and American individuals travelling to the UK between 2011 and 2015, while the second shows how much these visitors spent over the same period.
Overall, the number of UK tourists to the US showed a mild dip before rising steadily, the number of US visitors to the UK remained relatively stable with some fluctuation. Spending trends followed a similar pattern, with UK tourist expenditure showing consistent growth. It is also apparent that British tourist numbers visiting the US were higher than the figure for the American people during five years. On the other hand, British visitors not only outnumbered their American counterparts but also consistently spent more, with the most significant spending gap occurring in 2015.
Regarding UK tourism to the US, the tourist figure recorded a slight decline to just under 3 million people from 2011 to 2013, it climbed to upward of 3 million visitors in the following years and peaked at 3,5 million visitors in the last year. Whereas US tourism to the UK almost remained stable at 2,8 million travellers, apart from a dip in 2013 and finally reached its highest point of about 3,2 million individuals in 2015.
In terms of spending, it is clear that the amount spent by British tourists grew substantially during 5 surveyed years. It was only south of 4 billion USD in 2011, but later rose to just over 4 billion USD over the following 3 years, before ending the period at nearly 6 billion USD in 2015. While the amount of money spent by American tourists experienced a minimal growth to about 3 billion USD between 2011 and 2012, with a subsequent dip in the next year and a final sharp surge to slightly above 3 billion USD in 2014. After that it peaked at 4 billion USD in the last year.