The number of business trips made by UK residents has fallen by around 5.4% on the same period last year, according to provisional statistics released this week by the Office for National Statistics. The figures show that the number of trips made during the quarter was 1.605 million compared with 1.698 million in the first quarter of 2014.
Europe remains by far the most common destination for UK business travellers, representing 78.0% of all trips during the quarter, up from 76.7% in 2014. Most of this gain is due to an fall in trips to North America over the same period.
The ONS figures also show that during the first quarter of 2015, some 1.7 million Europeans travelled to the UK on business, as well as 182,000 from North America and 157,000 from other countries. The total number of business trips to the UK by overseas residents is similar to the number of overseas visitors who come to the UK on holiday. By contrast, four times as many UK residents go abroad on holiday compared to the number of business trips.
