London Calling: Rebuilding London’s tourism industry

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, London was the third most visited city in the world, welcoming a record 21.7 million inbound visitors in 2019. Tourism is an essential part of London’s economy, employing 700,000 people – one in seven of the capital’s jobs. But the sector has been hit hard by the pandemic, and it continues to suffer due to the substantial reduction in the number of overseas visitors.

The London Assembly Economy Committee carried out an investigation into how to rebuild London’s tourism industry in the wake of the pandemic. The Committee heard from key stakeholders in the industry about how the tourism industry is recovering from the pandemic, and what further measures the Mayor and central government can take to encourage both international and domestic tourists to return to London.

The committee also questioned the Mayor and London & Partners on their Let’s Do London campaign and reviewed the data provided on the outcomes of the campaign.



The London Calling: Rebuilding London’s tourism industry report makes the following recommendations:

• Recommendation 1: The Committee would like to see comparators with other large UK cities and the growth of their tourism sectors in the period while Let’s Do London is running, as well as international comparisons.
• Recommendation 2: The Mayor should set out how the recovery missions will help London’s tourism industry recover from the pandemic and how this work is being coordinated, given that there is no specific recovery mission for tourism.
• Recommendation 3: The Mayor should clarify who in the Mayoral team holds overall responsibility for tourism in London, how Deputy Mayors work together on tourism-related issues and who the Committee should approach in order to scrutinise the Mayor’s policies that relate to tourism.
• Recommendation 4: The Mayor’s international tourism campaign should encourage international visitors to make longer visits to London and should highlight environmentally sustainable travel methods, which will bring economic benefits and help make international travel less environmentally damaging.
• Recommendation 5: The Mayor and London & Partners should provide further information to the Economy Committee about the planned international tourism campaign, including which countries will be targeted and what targets will be set to determine the success of the campaign.
• Recommendation 6: The Mayor should conduct detailed analysis of labour shortages across the hospitality and tourism sectors in London, with the aim of identifying where skills and labour shortages exist and developing a plan of how to fill these gaps, including lobbying the Government for any support that is required.
• Recommendation 7: As part of the Good Work Standard, the Mayor should continue to work alongside employers in the tourism industry to improve working conditions, ensuring jobs provide good-quality work and that there are progression opportunities in the sector.
• Recommendation 8: Given that the tourism and hospitality sectors are not expected to have fully recovered by March 2022, the Government should maintain the current VAT rate of 12.5 per cent for these sectors until March 2023, rather than increasing it back up to 20 per cent in March 2022 as currently planned.
• Recommendation 9: There needs to be clear and consistent messaging from the Mayor and the Government about the COVID-19 safety and any future public health guidance related to businesses across London’s tourism industry.
• Recommendation 10: The Mayor and London & Partners should renew the 2017 Tourism Vision for London to reflect the impact of COVID-19 and the 2018 declaration of the climate emergency and ensure that it is joined up with the Government’s Tourism Recovery Plan.