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Love them or loathe them, the royal family are up there with red telephone boxes and scones when it comes to images of Britishness. Souvenir shops are full of their faces, newspapers across the world discuss them, and television dramas based on their lives have never been more popular.

Whenever people are critical of the royal family, the oft-repeated retort is “but think of the tourism!”. This has been particularly common rhetoric recently, as many people question how a country facing mass strikes and a crippling cost of living crisis can afford the estimated £100m cost of King Charles III’s coronation.

In a recent YouGov poll, 51% did not believe the coronation should be paid for by taxpayers. For young people, this figure was even higher, at 62%. But supporters will often use tourism as justification for lavish expenses.

The royal family does bring tourism to the UK. The economic consultancy Centre for Economics and Business Research estimated that the coronation weekend would lead to a £337m boost from tourism and pub spending.

But if the royal family were to disappear, would the UK’s tourism industry suddenly implode?

2011 research by Visit Britain found that around 60% of tourists to the UK are likely to visit places associated with the royal family. While there is no more recent specifically royal data, in 2022 Visit Britain found that history and heritage was the biggest pull factor to tourists.

And while the international perception of Britain is certainly intertwined with the royal family, this does not tell us whether a reigning royal family is necessary for tourism. After all, the history surrounding the monarchy and places associated with them would still be here even if the royal family was not. Ottoman palaces of Istanbul remain wildly popular attractions 100 years since the collapse of the caliphate, as are the royal châteaus of France or imperial palaces of China.

Lack of royalty does not seem to have affected these countries’ appeal, each of which attract more tourists annually than the UK.

A special relationship

The USA is the UK’s largest tourist market, and American tourists do seem to be very fond of things associated with British royalty.

But this may change with the new monarch. In a poll taken in February 2021, before the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a whopping 68% of Americans viewed her favourably. The same poll found only 34% had a favourable opinion of Charles – but this has changed in his favour following his accession to the throne, according to a poll taken before the coronation which gave him a 50% approval rating in the US. That said, 62% of people in the US said they did not care about the coronation very much or at all.

Outside America, the UK’s next largest tourist groups have significantly less interest in the royal family. The holiday firm Travelzoo found in 2016 that just 19% of German, 15% of French and only 10% of Spanish travellers want to come to the UK because of the British monarchy.

Where do tourists go?

Typically, when commentators discuss the royal contributions to tourism, they talk about significant events such as weddings, jubilees, coronations and funerals. Even though these events attract huge crowds, they happen rarely and are unrepresentative of the tourism industry as a whole. Research has found that royal weddings massively improve a country’s image and brand awareness, but are not comparable to major mega events such as the Fifa World Cup, the Super Bowl or the Olympics.

Even though royal places are popular, they are far from our most popular attractions. Of Britain’s ten most visited free and paid-for attractions in 2021, none were royal attractions. The highest ranking royal attraction was the Tower of London, making only 17th on the list.

Typically, Chester Zoo attracts more visitors than Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace, although these statistics do not differentiate between domestic and international tourists. In the most recent Windsor visitor survey, the majority of its tourists came from overseas.

Anti-monarchy group Republic has disputed the widely cited figure that the monarchy generates £500 million in tourism income for the UK annually – which itself would be only a small fraction of Britain’s £127 billion tourism economy.

The group also questions why royalty barely feature on British tourism campaigns or advertisements, if they are so vital to the tourism economy.

It is impossible to deny that royalty adds to the UK’s appeal as a tourist destination – the history and associated heritage is famous worldwide. However, what is questionable is whether a reigning monarchy is necessary for this attractiveness to continue.

Ross Bennett-Cook, Visiting Lecturer, School of Architecture + Cities, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The spectacle of royal events and access to parts of the royal estate enables national tourism agencies to build on their appeal, writes Claire Haven-Tang from Cardiff Metropolitan University.

The royals draw millions of tourists every year – The Daily Mail, November 20, 2017.

The Royal family are so important for tourism in London – A spokesperson for VisitBritain, quoted in the International Business Times, November 27, 2017.

Regardless of whether you are a royalist or not, the royal family undeniably attracts public interest around the UK and internationally. Visits and tours by the royals generate extensive media attention – as well as tourists.

Love it or hate it, the pomp and pageantry associated with British royalty, whether routine events such as Trooping the Colour or anniversaries such as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, are rarely found in any other country. These public ceremonies, in addition to parts of the estates owned by the royal family, are important in attracting tourists.

When Prince William married Kate Middleton in April 2011, the UK’s Association of Leading Visitor Attractions claimed it:

“Saw an additional 600,000 people come to London for the weekend, 60% from UK, 40% from overseas, spending £107m … The value to ‘brand Britain’ due to global media coverage was approximately £1bn.”

VisitBritain reported that, globally, more than two billion people watched the wedding ceremony, with its content aired by key broadcasters internationally. It wasn’t just visitors to London that increased – the Office for National Statistics reported that during April 2011, an extra 350,000 visitors travelled to the UK compared to 2010.

Tourism also flourished on the island of Anglesey in Wales, where the royal couple lived after the wedding. Tourism managers said William and Kate brought priceless publicity and some tourism businesses reported a 20% increase in business in 2011.

The Queen’s official residences also attract significant numbers of visitors: 2.8 million people in 2016, with the top three being Windsor Castle (1,432,260 visitors), Buckingham Palace (576,995 visitors), and the Palace of Holyroodhouse (392,260 visitors).

These statistics corroborate research by VisitBritain in 2011 which showed that more than 60% of overseas visitors who come to Britain are “likely” to visit places associated with the royal family.

Britain is recognised as a world-class destination for culture and heritage. Although VisitBritain does not collate statistics on the royal family as an attraction, in a 2012 response to a freedom of information request under its former name as the British Tourist Authority, it estimated that those visitors to the UK who are attracted by British culture and heritage spend in the region of £4.5bn annually, out of a total overseas visitor spend of £17bn.

Approximately £500m of that £4.5bn is attributed to attractions and events connected to the royal family, past and present.

Verdict

There is an absence of data as to whether tourists go to the UK specifically because of the royal family.

However, while tourists might not be primarily attracted to the UK solely by the monarchy, the spectacle of royal events and access to parts of the royal estate across the UK enables VisitBritain and other national tourism agencies to build on Britain’s tourism appeal which blends heritage, pageantry and the contemporary.

In this way, the relationship between royalty and tourism has an important economic and destination marketing dimension.

Claire Haven-Tang is a Reader in tourism and management at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Review

Liz Sharples, senior teaching fellow (tourism), University of Portsmouth

It is not difficult to agree with the verdict of this fact check, although, as it points out, data specifically identifying “royalty and monarchy” as the main motivator for travel is hard to pinpoint.

VisitBritain states that 64% of visitors going to Britain plan to visit famous monuments and buildings with over a third of tourists visiting London listing a tour of Buckingham Palace as a bucket list activity.

In contrast, Republic, an anti-monarchy pressure group, challenges the view that the British monarchy is good for tourism and argues that other attractions pull in more visitors. In 2016, for example, the British Museum was the UK’s most visited attraction, and according to data from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, more people visited Chester Zoo and Kew Gardens than Windsor Castle.

However, with the current slump in the pound and the spring wedding of Prince Harry to American Meghan Markle, it is almost impossible not to agree that tourists (particularly those from the US) will be drawn – by royal invitation – to Britain in 2018.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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