High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Monday, August 10, 2009
Overseas Visitors
Information on the number of visitors from overseas is captured by the International Passenger Survey ( IPS).
Final figures released from the IPS for 2008, show a decrease of 11% in the total number of visits to Scotland by overseas residents compared to the period January to December 2007 (from 2.8 million to 2.5 million visits). In comparison, the final figures for 2008 overseas visits to the UK decreased by 3% from 2007.
Of the overseas visitors to Scotland in 2008, 69% came from Europe, 18% from North America and the remaining 13% from other parts of the world.
Further Information
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Note: It should be noted that Prestwick airport was introduced into the IPS sample at the beginning of 2005. Due to this change in the survey methodology, care should be exercised when comparing results from 2005 with those published for previous years by the Office for National Statistics. It is for this reason that earlier data for overseas visitors are not reported on this web page (Source: International Passenger Survey, Office for National Statistics ( ONS and VisitScotland).