Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape, looking forward to one or actually away, and having, I hope, the time of your life. Today, the collapse in inbound tourism to the UK and why it matters to you.

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I don't often talk about things that the corporate part of Visit Britain sends out.

This, of course, is the effectively Tourist Board for the UK, and their job is to attract

inbound tourists.

It is an absolutely thankless task.

We are witnessing absolutely the most damaging time for inbound tourism that we have ever seen.

And it seems to me that even though Visit Britain is extremely alarmed by this,

and it's part of government, part of the

Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and I think digital we have to say as well these days,

it is having a desperate time. They have, this morning the people there have sent out the data

showing inward flight bookings to the UK compared with where they were in 2019.

Now this isn't the number of people coming in, it's the number of new flight bookings.

And so therefore it will be people who are coming in maybe for Christmas, planning a spring break here or even

a summer holiday. It looks terrible. We are seeing just 37% of the corresponding week in 2019.

Now, in the second week of December, not that many people are booking trips, but for 63% of those who did previously just think, no, I'm not going to go there, is disastrous.

I've looked all the way through as far as the Visit Britain figures go back.

And I'm seeing that we have got an average of just 38% since the summer.

Now, you would expect things to be getting significantly better.

After all, we've had the removal of the pre-departure test

and the softening of the PCR test on arrival to a cheaper, quicker lateral flow test.

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