British tourism marketing body, VisitBritain, has welcomed figures showing that a record number of visitors have travelled to Britain in the first half of the year, but admitted that visitor spend has not grown accordingly.

For the six months to June 2004, 12.5 million visitors travelled to Britain, an increase of 13 per cent on 2003.

Between April and June, visitor growth was recorded from traditional markets such as North America – up 20 per cent – and Western Europe – up 11 per cent – but the most significant increase was in visitors from Eastern Europe and long haul destinations in the rest of the world – up 29 per cent.

However, while visitor spend has seen a year to date rise of 9 per cent, spending has yet to return to the levels seen prior to foot and mouth outbreaks and September 11, being down 5 per cent down on figures from 2000.

VisitBritain will be continuing its marketing efforts in the emerging markets which it says are mainly responsible for the rise in visitor numbers from the rest of the world, in particular, China and Russia.