Introduction
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released the latest provisional International Passenger Survey (IPS) results covering 2023 data. This report now includes full year 2023 data with comparisons to previous years. Trend data has also been updated to account for revised figures in previous years. All data can be found at Travel trends: 2023 (ONS).
The IPS collects information about passengers entering and leaving the UK and has been running continuously since 1961. Anonymous face-to-face interviews are undertaken with a random sample of passengers as they leave the UK, for 2023 Wales this was 981 interviews. Sample was drawn from all major ports of entry in the UK, for Wales this includes Cardiff airport, Holyhead, Pembroke and Fishguard.
Summary of findings for Wales
Wales received 892,000 visits in 2023, down 13% on 2019 but up 30% on 2022, whilst spend reached £458m in 2023, down 11% on 2019, but up 16% on 2022. Wales remains the only UK nation to not recover spend figures from 2019.
Wales has received the lowest visitor and spend figures across the UK except for the North East of England since 2019, except for spend figures in 2019 when the East Midlands region reported slightly lower figures putting Wales into third lowest.
About the data
The data presented in this publication is derived from the IPS conducted by the ONS. Please refer to the ONS website for more on IPS methodology.
