Internal and external factors
Within travel and tourism inbound and domestic tourism are frequently changing, there are many internal and external factors which have a major impact and contribute to these changes. In this assignment I am going to analyse 3 internal and 3 external factors which affect the travel and tourism industry.
Internal
Strength of the pound
Depending on how strong the UK pound is determines how well the country’s economy is; if the pound is strong this means the country is doing well and vice versa. However this also has an effect on the number of people that visit the UK, a strong pound actually deters overseas visitors due to them receiving fewer pounds when exchanging their own money as one UK pound is worth …show more content…
Exchange rates
Exchange rates fluctuate every day and they have a very significant impact on the number of inbound visitors in the UK. As the British pound is currently weak against the euro this makes the country more affordable and attractive as a destination for international tourists particularly countries who have the Euro or US Dollar as their currency, which means that the number of inbound tourists are higher as to when the pound is strong against other currencies. In 2000 £1 was equivalent to €1.74 however, since then the strength of the British pound has continued to decrease and has hit a record low of just 1.23 Euros for 1 British pound in 2008 and more recently €1.17 to the £1 in 2010.

2010 exchange rates

Book one 3rd edition – Unit 3 – page 118 – Ray Youell - 1/12/10
The following graph shows how the British pound has decreased against the Euro since the year 2000.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7592971.stm 1/12/10

Although visitor numbers have declined from the year 2007 onwards due to the UK recession, the amount of money spent by