{"id":3466,"date":"2025-07-18T15:34:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/3466\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T15:34:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:34:19","slug":"tourisms-impact-on-york-economy-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/3466\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism’s impact on York economy grows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seb Cheer<\/p>\n

BBC News, Yorkshire<\/p>\n

\"Geograph\/DSGeograph\/DS Pugh<\/p>\n

York’s tourism organisation, Make It York, said the sector contributed \u00a32.01bn to the city’s economy in 2024<\/p>\n

The number of visitors to York has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels despite the tourism sector being increasingly important to the city’s economy, a report has found.<\/p>\n

Make It York, an organisation dedicated to promoting the city as a destination, said tourism contributed \u00a32.01bn to York’s economy in 2024 – an increase of 5.04% since 2023.<\/p>\n

More than a third (34%) of spending by visitors was in the retail sector, with 27% at food and drink outlets and 25% on accommodation.<\/p>\n

Ben Lerigo, data analyst at Make It York, said: “It’s no exaggeration to say that York has something for everyone.”<\/p>\n

At 9.4m, annual visitor numbers to the city were still below pre-pandemic levels, he added, but wasn’t able to identify any specific reasons “why the growth isn’t happening as quick as possible”.<\/p>\n

Mr Lerigo added: “We’re definitely seeing a trend more towards growth in domestic tourism particularly, but we’ve also seen an increase in international tourism as well.”<\/p>\n

According to the report, overseas visitors accounted for nearly a quarter of the economic impact.<\/p>\n

It also highlighted a rise in employment in the tourism sector, with 16,788 employees in 2024, an annual increase of 4.8%.<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

More than a million visitors to York stayed overnight, for an average of 3.3 nights each<\/p>\n

The number of visitors staying overnight in York reached 1.7m in 2024, the report said, adding that it was a “slight” increase on the previous year.<\/p>\n

More than half of those used serviced accommodation, such as hotels.<\/p>\n

Concerns had recently been raised<\/a> by residents in York about the impact of short-term rental accommodation on the city’s housing market.<\/p>\n

Mr Lerigo said it was “really important” to find a balance, and avoid “over-tourism”, similar to that being seen in Spain.<\/a><\/p>\n

Make It York was beginning to examine social impact and social return of tourism, he added.<\/p>\n

“Economic return is a lot easier to understand the impact of, but there’s other things as well and we want to make sure it’s sustainable.”<\/p>\n

That work included encouraging visitors to use public transport, including park and ride services.<\/p>\n

“We want to make sure that we’re benefitting as many people as we can, both locals and tourists alike.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seb Cheer BBC News, Yorkshire Geograph\/DS Pugh York’s tourism organisation, Make It York, said the sector contributed \u00a32.01bn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-3466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}