Visit Scotland | Alba

Overview

  • Explore Scotland’s cosmopolitan capital that is just a stones-throw away from attractive coastlines and scenery. Award-winning attractions and activities meet world-class history and culture in our nation’s capital city. Edinburgh and the Lothians really tick all the boxes.
  • Statistics on the volume and value of visitors to individual regions of Scotland are collated from several national surveys. These include the International Passenger Survey, the Great Britain Tourism Survey and the Great Britain Day Visits Survey.
  • These national surveys were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel restrictions. Prior to the pandemic, three year average figures were produced for individual regions due to some having lower sample sizes on an annual basis.
  • We are currently reviewing the full year 2022 data to establish what is feasible at a regional level. It may be that some regions will require to be amalgamated to produce an indication of regional performance until more data is available.
  • The latest factsheet available is for 2019.

Edinburgh and the Lothians factsheet 2019

Published December 2020

This report provides a summary of statistics on tourism in Edinburgh and the Lothians. It gathers information from a suite of tourism monitors, national statistics and commissioned research.

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In this article:

1. Key statistics

5.3 million

overnight visits

24.8 million

day visits

20.7 million

nights

£3.3 billion

total spend

Figures shown represent tourism performance for Edinburgh and the Lothians, 2019

2. Scotland Visitor Survey 2023

We are currently conducting a visitor survey across Scotland. We are speaking to overnight visitors on the ground in Scotland and then will follow up on their return home so that we get a full picture of their visitor experience.

We will be carrying out the research during 2023 and results will be available in 2024. It will gather insight on motivations for visiting, experiences in Scotland and how visitors have rated aspects of their trip. Where we have a robust sample size we will look at the data at a regional level.

Previous research was conducted in 2015/2016.

Scotland Visitor Survey 2015 and 2016 - Edinburgh City summary

Published April 2017

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Scotland Visitor Survey 2015 and 2016 - The Lothians summary

Published April 2017

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