The increase meant 2.3 million visitors from the UK arrived in the country in 2015. In total 23.6 million tourists visited the country throughout the year, an increase of 7.1%.
However, the total international growth was driven by countries from the EU whose visitor numbers grew 13% to 14.9 million. Arrivals from countries outside of the EU dropped by 1.8% to 8.6 million.
One of the largest falls in visitor numbers was from Russia where visitor numbers fell 59% to 513,000, although US visitor numbers grew by 26.8% to 750,000.
