Tourism Research
Music tourists contribute at least £864m a year to the UK economy
Drawing on unprecedented access to more than 2.5m anonymised ticketing transactions, the report’s main findings are as follows:
- Large-scale live music across all regions of the UK attracts at least 7.7m attendances by domestic and overseas music tourists
- Collectively they spend £1.4bn during the course of their trip
- This is a positive contribution of £864m (GVA) to the national economy and equivalent to 19,700 full-time jobs
- Although 5% of all music tourists come from overseas, they contribute 18% of total music tourist spending
From these findings UK Music has issued a list of recommendations to Government – including the implementation of a national live music tourism strategy, with the immediate goal of increasing the number of overseas music tourists.
Research on Destination Music was undertaken by Bournemouth University’s International Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Research.
Research leader, Professor Adam Blake said: “This is the first time that a comprehensive study of music tourism has ever been undertaken in the UK. The data on where music-goers come from confirms that large numbers of them do travel around the country to go to music events, and significant numbers come from overseas. However, it is important to note that our definition of a music tourist is hugely conservative, and that we did not analyse the vast numbers of non-ticketed or smaller capacity events. Subsequently, the true value of music to UK tourism will be much higher.”
The full report can be downloaded below:
UK Music Research - Music and Tourism - Full Report.pdf
