Music tourism





Wish You Were Here, a new study launched today by UK Music makes this clear.  It’s results are pretty incredible:  Britain’s music and the artists behind it encourages a massive 6.5m people to become music tourists, traveling to gigs and concerts all over the country, and spending over £2 billion while they do it.


The figures in Wish You Were Here are actually conservative because they only include large ticketed music events and do not count the thousands of tourists from Rio and Rotterdam who come to Britain for the Notting Hill Carnival or wander Manchester’s streets until they chance upon Salford Lads Club, the backdrop for The Smith’s The Queen Is Dead album and now one of the country’s most famous music heritage sites.

What else did Wish You Were Here unearth?  Well, the music tourist also spends quite a bit of money on merchandising and the like when they get to gigs, especially those from overseas.  An average foreign music tourist will spend of £910 at a festival, compared to £396 spent by domestic tourists.  But, they both help to sustain nearly 25,000 full time jobs in the live music sector.

And the capital city of music tourism?  Despite Liverpool’s pull for Beatles fans and Birmingham’s magnetism for heavy metal lovers  (the second city is even considering a Brummie music ambassador to attract more hard rock tourists) London attracts the most music tourists with 1.8m flocking to the capital.

Wish You Were Here
£914m - additional indirect music spend generated by music tourists
6.5m - number of music tourists
24,251 - number of full time jobs sustained by music tourists
28% - proportion of music tourists who visit the capital

Tourism has been identified by Government as having a key role in helping to grow the UK economy.  It has set a target of attracting 40m overseas visitors by 2020 and UK Music CEO Jo Dipple and a number of heavy weight politicians, including Creative Minister Ed Vaizey, now believe music should be given a greater role in helping to achieve that.


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