Working Paper 46: Visit London Economic Impact Evaluation

This paper estimates the economic impact of a leisure tourism marketing campaign conducted by Visit London in North America. The paper highlights the use of improved evaluation methods for estimating economic impact – the first time that such methods have been used.

This more robust way of estimating the net economic impact of tourism marketing activity enables policy makers to better understand the economic returns they achieve from spend in this area. Whilst the economic impact estimated from the improved methodology is significantly lower than that produced by the previous methodology, the impact (at the UK level) still appears favourable when compared to that derived from other economic development interventions.

Lessons from this research should be applied to strands of promotional activity other than tourism marketing. This will improve the information available to policy makers in allocating public funds to and between different promotional activities on a robust and consistent basis.