US visitor figures start to improve

The latest US arrival figures to the end of October show a slowly improving trend from the UK since the end of March when the full impact of the recession was hitting hard.

Up to that point the UK was down by26.6% but by the end of October, the decline had diminished considerably to 14.8%.
 
Visit USA's chief operating officer, Alan Waddell is confident that the improving trend will have continued for the last two months of 2009.

"This demonstrates a substantial return to normality and hopefully we will start to see positive growth again in 2010. This has been happening across Europe which, generally speaking, has been hit rather less than the UK - but the UK is still by far the largest European market and still the biggest overseas market to the US!"