Bath is aiming to become one of Britain’s top 10 cities for overseas tourists after leaping five places to reach 12th in the latest rankings.
Statistics from VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, show foreign visitors to Bath rose by 36.8% to 323,000 in 2014-15.
The increase was the highest among any city in the top 20 table and meant Bath leapfrogged cities such as York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Inverness.
Bath Tourism Plus, the body responsible for marketing the city and which runs the VisitBath website, said the figures reflected strategically focused marketing efforts made during 2013/2014, which were supported by significant funding from the government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF).
A further £5m from the South West Growth Fund last year helped Bath target potential visitors from Australia, New Zealand, the US, Netherlands, Ireland and Germany.
Bath was also part of a £90,000 English heritage cities digital and PR campaign run by the Great UK Challenge Fund aimed at promoting the city in Paris.
Bath Tourism Plus CEO David James said: “To jump one place in the league table of in-bound visits would be a good result, but to move up five places to reach 12th is an outstanding performance and illustrates that our work has paid off.
“However, we cannot rest on our laurels and we now need to build on this fantastic achievement and continue to work hard. We are currently bidding for up to four new product development projects via the VisitBritain Discover Fund and results like this really do show funders such as VisitBritain how good we are at actual delivery.
“We have our sights set firmly on reaching the top 10 but this is going to mean further investment in our marketing efforts and support of our industry and local authority partners.”
He congratulated the Bath Tourism Plus team for their hard work and local partners, including Bath & North East Somerset Council, for their continued support.
“VisitBath are recognised by VisitEngland as an ‘exemplar company’ and being one of the top performing tourist boards in the UK,” he said.
The top 10 cities in the VisitBritain 2014-15 rankings are London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, Liverpool, Oxford, Bristol, Brighton/Hove and Cambridge. They all remained in their same positions as the previous year. The 11th highest city, Cardiff, had 358,000 overseas visitors during the year – just 35,000 above Bath.
