Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of tourism from India on the economy of (a) Greater Manchester and (b) United Kingdom in each of the last five years.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the expenditure of visitors to the UK from India was steadily increasing. In 2019, the total expenditure of visitors from India was £752.46 million and the average spend per visit was £1,088 - in Greater Manchester the total expenditure was £51.96 million and the average spend was £1,299 per visit. In 2019, there were 692,660 visits from India to the UK; 39,990 of these were to Greater Manchester.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a 53% reduction in seat capacity from India to the UK in 2020 and in 2021 was 54% behind pre-COVID levels.

The Government is committed to assisting and accelerating the tourism sector’s recovery from COVID-19 which is why we published the Tourism Recovery Plan (TRP) in June 2021.

The TRP sets out ambitious and stretching targets to recover inbound visitor numbers and spend to 2019 levels by the end of 2023 and recover domestic overnight trip volume and spend by the end of 2022 - at least a year faster than independent forecasts predict.

We are now showing the rest of the world that the UK is open, and ready to welcome visitors from around the world for a blockbuster year of events which began with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee last weekend. India has been one of VisitBritain’s key campaign markets for the upcoming Birmingham Commonwealth Games taking place this summer. As well as the Commonwealth Games, we will also be showcasing the breadth of the UK’s culture, creativity and innovation through Unboxed, ‘Creativity in the UK’.