London took roughly 20 million overseas visitors in 2025 — 46% of all UK inbound visits — spending £17.4 billion, more than the rest of the country combined. The passport mix is led by Americans, and the spend per head has hit an all-time high even as volumes recover.
The United States is London's largest international source by a wide margin: 3.03 million American visits to the UK in 2024, the majority touching London. France (~1.5M UK visits), Germany (~1.5M), Spain, Italy and the Netherlands follow — a short-haul European spine feeding the Eurostar and the low-cost airports.
The structural shift of the decade is the rise of the Gulf and Asia: Middle East traffic through Heathrow grew 2.8% in 2025, Asia-Pacific 2.6%, while the EU grew just 1.1%. London's luxury hotel pipeline is being built for the visitor who flies eight hours, not eighty minutes.
International visitors to London spent £17.4 billion in 2025 — a record, up from £16.3 billion in 2024 — on 116 million nights. The average overseas visitor to the capital spends over £800 per trip; business visitors spend the most per day (£184), holidaymakers £160. London captures 51.6% of all UK inbound spending on 46% of the visits: the yield premium is the point.
Domestic tourism is the volume base underneath: 15 million overnight trips from within the UK, £4.8 billion in spend. It is price-sensitive, weekend-skewed and the reason the mid-market pod hotels keep multiplying.
The conversion pipeline — Admiralty Arch, the Chancery Rosewood, the Whiteley Six Senses — is a bet on the high-yield long-haul visitor. The US alone sends more high-spend leisure travellers to London than any other market; add Gulf family offices and the Asian recovery, and the top of the market is not supply-constrained, it is suite-constrained. London is building suites for the passports that spend.
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