Was going to post this in the other thread, but perhaps it deserves its own.Scottish Tourism Economic Impact Model (STEAM) figures revealed that visitors spent £2.35bn in Glasgow in 2023 - a 48.6% jump from 2022.
A total of 3.91 million people visitors stayed in Glasgow overnight, an increase of 47.3% from 2.65 million, while day visitors improved from 17.69 million in 2022 to 21.8 million.
The total number of people visiting Glasgow increased by 26.6%, to a total of 25.75 million.
And 37,117 local full-time jobs were supported by tourism, according to the STEAM data.
The complimentray ONS/visitbritain foreign visitor stats for 2023 are not published yet afaik, but the visitscoland site appears to suggest 685k for Glasgow for 2023, which compares to 588k for '22 and would be a 16.5% increase in a year.
These are very interesting numbers in the context of the narrative that we're seeing here and elsewhere suggesting that Glasgow is some kind of post-apocalyptic hellhole that nobody in their right mind would ever want to visit.
I see in the other thread that a member of the airport management had apparently privately briefed another poster, claiming that the city is a "shithole" and visitors and airlines don't want to come. These stats frankly make a mockery of that claim.
The reality is that various flavours of "no inbound/tourism demand to Glasgow" is a narrative that we've been hearing repeatedly trotted over the years from those in charge at GLA for 20+ years, despite the fact that statistics have consistently proved this to be questionable at best and thus highlighted imo more than a hint of excuse making and deflection.