Make It York reveals the positive value of tourism in York with results reaffirming York’s position as a leading destination for both domestic and international travellers.
Tourism contributed an outstanding £2.08 billion to York’s economy in 2025 – a 3.6% increase from 2024 – with spending patterns showing:
- 32% of visitor spend went to York’s vibrant shops and retail offering,
- 27% was spent on the diverse food and drink scene,
- 27% supported the city’s accommodation sector,
- 11% went toward recreation and entertainment, and
- 3% was spent on transport and getting around the city.
This is made of domestic travellers injecting £1.50 billion into York’s economy, while overseas visitors alone accounted for over a quarter of the economic impact, bringing in £0.57 billion.
York welcomed an impressive 8.88 million visitors. This reflects the success of our ongoing efforts to attract, engage and inspire visitors. The visitor number is made of day visitors, reaching 7.01 million, and overnight visitors, where the economic impact of staying visitors has now exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
The number of staying visitors reached 1.87 million – an increase of 9% on 2024. All accommodation sectors have seen a growth in those staying compared with 2024, meaning an increase in economic impact. With an average length of stay at 3.1 nights across serviced accommodation and hotels, non-serviced accommodation, and staying with friends and family.
International travellers to York remain strong with overseas visitors making up 18% of the total visits. Of this, 47% of international visitors chose to stay overnight in York, with serviced accommodation being a firm popular choice accounting for 47%, with greater length of stay at 3.6 nights. This reinforces York’s breadth of quality accommodation on offer and highlights the importance of international visitors on the city’s local economy.
Beyond its economic benefits, tourism also enhances York’s profile as an exceptional place to live, work and do business. In 2025, 15.9K employees (FTEs) were supported directly and indirectly by tourism.
Sarah Loftus, Managing Director of Make It York, said: “The continued growth of York’s economy is a testament to the city’s enduring appeal and our collective efforts to deliver exceptional experiences. It shows the pivotal role our local businesses, tourism partners and city-wide stakeholders have played in welcoming visitors to the city. We will continue to work together to enrich the visitor experience for residents and visitors, ensuring York continues to shine as the world-class destination it is.”
END
PRESS RELEASE: 6 August 2026
Notes to Editors
Source: 2025 STEAM report by Global Tourism Solutions (UK) Ltd 2025.
Comparisons to 2024 are shown against historic spend figures and separately indexed to adjust for the effects of inflation by multiplying 2024 spend by 1.036.
Read the full report and further reports: https://visityork.org/members/research-statistics/tourism-intelligence
About Make It York – Make It York’s purpose is to develop and promote the city and its surroundings, nationally and internationally, as a vibrant and attractive place to live, visit, study, work and do business. Its mission is to grow the economic prosperity and wider wellbeing of York and its citizens. In practice, this means delivering a range of projects and programmes based around our corporate strategic priorities. These are, city positioning and profile-raising, ensuring an exciting city centre, and delivering the city’s ground-breaking cultural strategy.
About Visit York – Visit York is a part of Make It York and is the leisure tourism brand. Under the brand Visit York, Make It York’s aim is to market York as a must-see world-class destination to the leisure and business visitor and ensure investment to develop the quality of tourism in York. Activity covers all aspects of tourism marketing and PR, including market intelligence, as well as providing business support through the membership programme. Visit York operate the Visit York Pass, York’s city-sightseeing card, and run the Visitor Information Centre.
