Each month the Scattered Clouds blog takes a look at the wonderful world of tourism through a data and evidence-led lens, all in pursuit of transforming tourism sector data into insight of course!
A look back at 1995 - June 2025
Once a year I devote a blog post to reflecting on a year in history through the lens of tourism stats and events. The featured year I’ve plumped for this time is 1995, some thirty years ago.
One reason for this is that later this year will be the 30th anniversary of the very first easyJet flight, which, should you ever need to know for a pub quiz, was from Luton to Glasgow. In the early days aircraft operated by easyJet had their fuselage emblazoned with a telephone number, why, well, because if you wanted to experience the service offered by this upstart airline you needed to make a phone call to book a seat.
For anyone in their twenties, or perhaps even their thirties, the very idea of having to make a phone call and speak to someone to book a simple flight from A to B must feel utterly ludicrous. The way we book travel has been revolutionised in the past three decades.
It’s worth pausing though, as the lesson here is perhaps that by the time we reach the year 2055 the way we research, book and experience travel today might appear equally archaic to anyone born in the next couple of decades.
Time for a blizzard of 1995 tourism stats. Inbound tourism had been enjoying a recent growth spurt and the visit tally for the year stood at 23.5 million, while Brits made a record 41.3 million outbound trips. How have these series evolved since? Well, the latest stats at the time of writing relate to the year ending June 2024, and in comparison with 1995 inbound volumes have grown by 69%, whereas outbound is up 117%.
The amount Britain earns from the typical inbound visit has fallen in the past 30 years from a smidge over £1,000 at today’s prices to around £810 now. Growth in trips with a short duration is a key driver of this reduction, while the average expenditure per night has remained remarkably stable.
Our five largest source markets in 1995 were France, USA, Germany, Irish Republic and Netherlands. Fast forward to the most recent stats and the quintet is composed of USA, France, Germany, Irish Republic and Spain. So, the top two have swapped places and Spain has bundled Netherlands down into sixth spot, but the markets that drove volume three decades ago still do so today.
There’s no single factor that sits behind the US having usurped France as our leading market in volume terms, but it’s certainly worth noting that in 1995 it typically cost an American $1.58 to buy £1, whereas today it is markedly lower at around $1.33, and whatever the market, value for money plays a leading role in underpinning destination choice.
Returning to the topic of making phone calls for information that today would perhaps be accessed via a phone but certainly not after dialling a number; back in 1995 the then British Tourist Authority launched a toll-free number in the USA enabling potential American visitors to access information about British weather, accommodation and theatre. Apparently the service received 540,000 calls a month!
In 1995 New Yorkers and Washingtonians wanting to visit London had (assuming they could afford it) the option of flying on Concorde, with a journey time roughly half that achievable today, underscoring that travel is not always destined to get quicker.
Periodic revisions in the way domestic tourism data is compiled make it challenging to compare current levels with those of 1995, but for what it is worth the estimated number of overnight domestic trips Brits made thirty years ago stood at 148 million, of which 94 million were for a holiday.
A competitive headwind faced by domestic tourism in the past three decades is the rapid expansion of affordable air travel to foreign climes, with a more than doubling in the number of outbound trips we make.
On the other side of the ledger when considering opportunities and challenges for domestic tourism is the fact that the population of the UK has grown in number since 1995, with latest ONS estimates suggesting that there are 17% more UK residents now than then, that’s akin to 10.2 million more people.
The visitor attraction scene is always evolving, with major projects in the offing today including Eden Project Morecambe and Universal Studios Great Britain in Bedfordshire. Back in 1995 Bicester Village opened its doors for the very first time, a site that is especially keen to see the renaissance of the inbound visitor market from China.
1995 was the first full year of operations through the Channel Tunnel with close to 7.1 million passengers making the journey. Then, as now, those wishing to take the train from Paris or Brussels to London had only one choice, namely Eurostar, but perhaps we won’t have to wait a further thirty years before there is competition, as it is this that has certainly led to greater destination choice and lower fares for those travelling by air between Europe and Britain in the past few decades.
I began on an aviation theme so that’s where we’ll conclude, as 1995 was the first full year during which those flying from a UK airport had the questionable joy of Air Passenger Duty being added to the price of their ticket.
Back then if you were flying within the UK or to a country that was within the European Economic Area the charge stood at £5, and if you were heading further afield it was £10. Spool forward to 2025 and the rate charged on a domestic flight is £7 (£14 if flying in a premium cabin), £13 to other short-haul destinations (£28 premium cabins), £90 (£216) for destinations such as North America and the Middle East and £94 (£224) to any country whose capital city is more than 5,500 miles from London.
With the exception of the levy on domestic flights which is now lower in real terms than thirty years ago, APD has risen by more than headline inflation, and on long-haul flights by much more. .