The line graph illustrates changes in internal visitors’ spending in the UK over a 30 years period from 1980 to 2010, while the pie charts present the distribution of different purposes of visiting the UK.
Overall, overseas visitors’ spending increased notably after 3 decades although fluctuations were obsereved throughout the period. Additionally, holiday remained the most common reasons for visiting the country after 30 years.
Regarding how much money was spent by international visitors, in 1980, they contributed less than 8,000 million pounds to the UK’s economy. The figure fluctuated moderately during the next ten years, reaching around 10,000 million pounds by 1990 before increasing further and peaking at 12,000 million pounds in 1996. The total spending decreased until 2002 before rebouncing by 2006 to nearly reach its highest point in 1996. By 2010, the figure finished at over 10,500 million pounds.
It can be observed from the pie charts that there was a decrease of 5% in the proportion of visitors comming to the UK during their holidays (from 44.1% to 39.1%). However, holiday was still the most prevalent motivation of overseas visitors in both years. Visiting friends or relatives increased from 18.7% to 28.2%, becoming the second most common reason by 2010. Similarly, visiting for business purpose grew marginally from 20.7% to 22.8%. In contrast other purposes only made up roughly one-tenth of the total visits by 2010 (a drop of 6.8% from 16.6% in 1980 to 9.8% in 2010).