Black Country visitors up by half a million
Visitors to the Black Country helped generate more than £825 million in revenue for the local economy last year.
New figures from Marketing Birmingham's research arm the Regional Observatory and tourism research body, Global Tourism Solutions show visitor numbers were up by nearly 500,000 to 25.7 million.
The annual report which assesses the economic impact of visitors to the UK's major cities also found that employment supported by tourism rose to more than 11,650 full time equivalent jobs – an increase of 550 jobs or five per cent.
Councillor Darren Cooper, chairman of the Black Country Joint Committee, said: "This is fantastic news for the region, the additional visitors and employment growth to nearly 12,000 jobs demonstrates that our distinctive visitor economy and cultural sectors are increasingly important to the Black Country economy."
Peter Suddock, chief executive of Dudley Zoo, said: "Our visitor numbers have risen substantially year on year, a trend that has continued in the first seven months of this year, up 17 per cent on the same period in 2013."
Mr Suddock, who is a member of the industry-led board of the newly-launched Tourism Council, added: "Tourism is vitally important to the West Midlands economy, bringing in one billion pounds per annum. "
He said the zoo was playingits part by thriving as a totally unique attraction and the increase in visitor numbers was due to continual across-site investment and development.
The new figures come as VisitEngland, the national tourist board, reveals the latest results of its three-year project, Growing Tourism Locally, which in its second year has to date generated a total of £416 million additional tourism spend and created 7,744 additional jobs for the sector.
The project, funded by £19.8m from the Government's Regional Growth Fund (RGF) and with a total investment of £41.6m including contributions from VisitEngland and the private sector, is aimed at inspiring UK residents to take more holidays at home. It plans to stimulate employment to grow jobs in the tourism sector by 9,139 over the three year period to March 2015.
