With yesterdays article highlighting the current slump in retail sales the LFF reviews the significance of UK retail sales suffering the steepest monthly decline in 13 years in April, and manufacturing activity reporting of its first decline in 2 years, never has the tourist expenditure been more important for the clothing sector as today.  Retailers are patiently waiting for what they can only hope will be a successful summer with the aid of high foreign footfall into London and other tourist hotspots.

An amazing £11.7 billion is spent by tourists in the UK each year, according to the Office of National Statistics £2 billion of this is coming from visitors outside of the European Union.  The Global Refund Index showed that tourist spend was spread rather evenly throughout 2004; despite the normal expected peaks in July, August and September.

The non-EU tourist shopping spend for the UK, France, Germany and Italy is shown below:

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        – 1 % on the previous year

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        – 4 % on the previous year

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        – 7 % on the previous year

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        + 5 % on the previous year

Many feel that the justification for the Italian rise is because of a change in legislation for Chinese visitors.  This relaxation of the rules certainly contributed to Italy’s 50% increase in spend from Chinese tourists.  Despite a fall in non-EU tourist shopping spend of 1% in 2004, there is a strong belief that the figures will increase for 2005 for the UK, as we are set to implement the same amendments in legislation in June or July of this year.  Visit London is forecasting a record year for 2005, expecting overseas visits to rise by 3.5% to 13.85 million during the year.