London Tourism Statistics 2026: Visitors, Hotels & Trends

London remains Europe's dominant city destination by a wide margin. The capital welcomed 20.9 million international visitors in 2024, who spent an estimated £17.3 billion — more than in either 2023 or pre-pandemic 2019 — while Heathrow handled an all-time record 83.9 million passengers. London alone accounts for almost half of all inbound visits to the UK. This guide breaks down the capital's tourism numbers: international arrivals, source markets, city comparisons, airports, hotels, attractions and domestic tourism. All figures come from official sources — the ONS International Passenger Survey, GLA Economics, VisitBritain, airport operators and ALVA — and are the latest available as of 2026.

Key London tourism statistics

• 20.9 million inbound visits to London in 2024, up from 20.3 million in 2023 and close to the 21.7 million of 2019 (ONS IPS via GLA Economics).
• Inbound visitors spent £17.3 billion in London in 2024 — up on both 2023 (£16.7 billion) and 2019 (£15.7 billion).
• The USA is London's biggest source market, with 3.7 million visits and £4.2 billion in spend in 2024.
• Heathrow set a new all-time record of 83.9 million passengers in 2024; Gatwick added a record 43.2 million.
• The British Museum was the UK's most-visited attraction in 2024 with 6,479,952 visits, up 11% year on year (ALVA).
• London had 145,984 hotel rooms across roughly 1,570 hotels as of September 2024 (HVS).
• Londoners and other Britons made 189 million domestic day visits to the capital in 2024 — 21% of England's total.

International visitors to London

• London received 20.9 million international visits in 2024, up from 20.3 million in 2023 and broadly in line with the pre-pandemic level of 21.7 million in 2019, according to the ONS International Passenger Survey figures published by GLA Economics.
• Inbound spend reached £17.3 billion in 2024, up from £16.7 billion in 2023 and £15.7 billion in 2019 — VisitBritain confirms London's inbound spend was up against both years.
• The Covid recovery is essentially complete in volume terms: visits collapsed to 16.1 million in 2022 before rebounding by more than 4 million within a year.
• GLA Economics projects London will reach around 25.2 million international visitors and 139 million visitor nights by 2030.
• One caveat: the ONS badges 2024 IPS estimates as 'official statistics in development' after methodological changes, so year-on-year comparisons should be read with care.

Where London's visitors come from

• The USA is London's most valuable market by far: 3.7 million visits and £4.2 billion in spend in 2024, per the GLA Economics analysis of IPS data.
• US visits grew 20% between 2019 and 2024, while American visitor spending in London rose by more than 70% over the same period.
• France was second with 2.0 million visits (£1.15 billion spend), followed by Germany with 1.6 million visits (£914 million).
• Spain (1.4 million visits) and Italy (1.2 million) round out the top five, with Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland and Canada completing the top ten.
• Australia punches above its weight on spend: 691,000 visits generated £746 million in 2024 — more than double Poland's spend from a similar visit volume.

London vs other UK cities

• London's 20.9 million inbound visits in 2024 were roughly eight times Edinburgh's 2.6 million — the next most-visited UK city — according to VisitBritain's town-level IPS data.
• Manchester followed with 1.5 million inbound visits, ahead of Birmingham (927,000), Liverpool (918,000) and Glasgow (736,000).
• The UK as a whole recorded around 42.6 million inbound visits and £32.5 billion in inbound spend in 2024 (VisitBritain) — meaning London captured almost half of all visits and over half of the spend.
• VisitBritain notes visits to London recovered slightly more strongly in 2024 than visits to the rest of England.

Airports: record years at Heathrow and Gatwick

• Heathrow handled a record 83.9 million passengers in 2024, up 6% year on year and beating its previous record of 80.9 million set in 2019 (Heathrow media centre).
• December 2024 was Heathrow's busiest December ever, with more than 7 million passengers; the airport forecast around 84.2 million passengers for 2025.
• Gatwick welcomed a record 43.2 million passengers in 2024, up 5.7%, served by 57 airlines — the most in its history (Gatwick media centre).
• London City carried 3.6 million passengers in 2024, up 4.6%, and nearly doubled pre-tax profit from £6.6 million to £11.8 million (City AM).
• London City has secured planning permission to raise its annual passenger cap from 6.5 million to 9 million (AeroTime).

Hotels: supply, occupancy and pipeline

• London had 145,984 hotel rooms across roughly 1,570 hotels as of September 2024, with four-star properties making up over 36% of supply and budget hotels almost 20% (HVS London Market Pulse 2024).
• Citywide occupancy reached 77% in 2023, up from 75% in 2022 but still around 3 percentage points behind 2019; average rates and RevPAR had already surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 2023.
• Central London full-service hotels ran at 84% occupancy in 2025 with gross operating profit of £135.5 per available room, and London ranks third among European markets for occupancy (HotStats and STR via Hospitality Net).
• 25 new hotels opened in London in 2024, adding around 2,700 rooms, with some 60 further projects and 6,150 rooms slated for 2025 (London & Partners).
• HVS counts 86 hotels totalling 11,155 rooms scheduled to open between 2024 and 2026; recent luxury openings include the Peninsula London (190 rooms), Raffles London at The OWO (120) and Mandarin Oriental Mayfair (50).
• For context on the wider market, England-wide hotel room occupancy stood at 83% in June 2026 (VisitBritain).

Attractions: what the ALVA 2024 figures show

• The British Museum was the UK's most-visited attraction in 2024 with 6,479,952 visits, up 11% on 2023 (ALVA figures via Museums + Heritage).
• The Natural History Museum was second with 6,301,972 visits, also up 11%.
• Other leading London venues in 2024: Tate Modern (4,603,025), Southbank Centre (3,734,075), V&A South Kensington (3,525,700), the National Gallery (3,203,451) and Somerset House (3,074,736).
• The Tower of London drew 2,902,385 visits, the Science Museum 2,827,242 and Kew Gardens 2,273,976.
• Across all 400 reporting ALVA sites, visits totalled 157.2 million in 2024 — up 3.4% year on year but still 8.8% below the 169.7 million recorded in 2019. London attractions collectively grew around 3%.

Domestic tourism in London

• London recorded 189 million domestic day visits in 2024 — 21% of England's total — up from 175 million in 2022 (GLA Economics, citing VisitBritain).
• The capital had 15.1 million domestic overnight trips in 2024, a 17% share of England's total, up from a 15% share in 2022.
• GLA Economics projects domestic overnight visitors will stabilise at around 14.5 million per year by 2029, with domestic visitor spending levelling off at roughly £4.8 billion (in real 2022 prices).
• A note of caution: methodological changes to the domestic tourism surveys mean pre- and post-Covid domestic figures are not fully comparable.

Sources

• GLA Economics — Tourism in London: Recent Trends (February 2026)
• VisitBritain — Inbound visits and spend: trends by UK town
• VisitBritain — Inbound visits and spend: annual, regional
• VisitBritain — Inbound visits and spend: annual, UK
• VisitBritain — England hotel occupancy
• Heathrow — results for the year ended 31 December 2024
• London Gatwick — 2024 performance report
• City AM — London City Airport 2024 results
• AeroTime — London City Airport passenger cap
• ALVA 2024 visitor figures — via Museums + Heritage
• HVS — London Market Pulse 2024
• Hospitality Net — London hotel profitability (HotStats/STR)
• London & Partners — new hotels transforming London in 2025