Jubilee Boost For Holiday Property Owners

The Royal Wedding last summer is being 'credited' with much of the 800,000 increase in overseas visitors to the UK last year, as more than half of this increase was accounted for by people from Asia, South America and Africa, with visitors from Brazil increasing by 50% and from China by 33%.

With a total of 30.6 million overseas visitors 2011 saw a number of records being set:

• A record spend of £17.8 billion
• American visitors at their highest sinec 2008
• 350,000 extra visitors in April when the Royal Wedding took place
• 11.6 million holiday visitors (i.e. not visiting friends or family)
• Tax Free shopping the highest for last 10 years.

Two questions come to mind when reading this:

1. The 'emerging markets' such as Brazil, China and Nigeria have accounted for a large amount of the increases in both visitors and tax free spend, so is this something that is beneifitting the holiday rental market, and

2. Will the Royal Jubilee (2nd - 5th June 2012) have the same impact on visitor levels and are holiday property owners seeing an increased level of enquiry for this period?