The two line charts illustrate the number of visits from France and North America to the UK for holiday and business purposes.
Overall, the numbers of visits from North American to the UK were generally higher than those from France in both categories. Most notably, the peak season of holiday visits is during July to September, whereas business visits saw a marked dip during this period. It is important to note that the numbers of holiday visits were considerably higher than those of business visits.
Looking first at holiday visits to the UK, North America initially recorded 0.75 million visits to the UK for holiday reasons, slightly lagging behind the corresponding figure for France at roughly 1 million, before converging around March. Afterwards, the figure for the former surged to around 2.5 million and rose further to hit its peak at 3 million during July to September, whereas that for the latter rose progressively to its highest point at 1.5 million. However, North America witnessed a marked plunge to its March level before settling at 0.75 million , while the figure for France declined steadily to 1 million over the surveyed timeframe. As a result, such decreases, albeit to varying degrees, had brought both figures to its initial level by the close of the period.
Turning to business visits, in January, North America reported around 0.15 million visits to the UK for business reasons , which was nearly triple that of France, at around 0.05 million. Thereafter, the figures of both North America and France rose slowly in tandem, with the former doubling to 0.3 million, while the latter climbed to 0.2, representing an identical rise of 0.15 million during January to June. By contrast, the figures of both North America and France both dipped noticeably to 0.2 million and 0.1 million respectively, before recovering by 0.1 million each to 0.3 million and 0.1 million, matching its June level and maintaining their disparity of 0.1 million. However, from October onwards, the figures of both countries diverged notably, with the figure North America edging up to roughly 0.32 million, while that of France slipped back to roughly 0.15 million at the end of the period, widening the business travel gap between these two countries.