Emirates Air Line attracts tourists in London

The cable car service across the River Thames, which was opened to the public before the London Olympic Games, faced a decrease in the number of passengers since that time. It gave the reason to name it just a “tourist attraction”, rather than the city transport solution of full value.

The Emirates Air Line, £60m worth, links the O2 Arena in Greenwich and the ExCel exhibition centre on the other side of the River Thames. In September, 2012, it carried 229 people an hour, while its capacity is 2,500 people.

Transport for London informed that the cable car service had already exceeded its target of carrying 1.3 million people in the first year. According to TfL statistics, 551,039 people used the Emirates Airline in August, and 210,077 people became its passengers on 1-16 September. They expect the increase of regular users, as the service will become more familiar.

VisitBritain plans to increase number of tourists

VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, which is responsible for marketing Britain worldwide and developing tourism in the UK, launched a plan to grow inbound visitor number to 40 million a year by 2020. According to the organization, this would be a 3 per cent year-on-year increase, which could deliver £8.7 billion additional foreign exchange earnings, and about 200,000 additional jobs.

VisitLondon plans to build its launch on the exposure the UK had from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and on showing Britain’s strengths, which include historical heritage and culture of Britain.

Currently, Britain hosts about 31 mln foreign visitors a year. In 2011, they spent £18 billion in the country.

New attraction park to be launched in London

In 2018, London will get a giant movie theme park. The £2 billion amusement park, which will be located on 272 acres in Thames Estuary, is expected to include attractions in honour of many heroes from such films of the Paramount company as Indiana Jones, Titanic, Tomb Raider, the Star Trek, and Sponge Bob Square Pants.

The park will also feature hotels and music venues. The firm set up to build the park is London Resort Company Holdings.

Assuming it passes the planning stage, Paramount’s venture will dwarf London’s other film studio attraction, the Warner Bros. Harry Potter tour. It can be also a rival to Disneyland Paris.

Gains and costs of London Olympics

As it was already obvious, the London Olympics 2012 did not bring much profit to the city, as there was no sign of the expected enormous number of tourists and overseas visitors. According to official figures of the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics, in July 2012 total number of foreign travelers who visited London was 3.18 million – that is 180,000 fewer if compared to last year July. Most of all – about 2.12 million people – came from European countries, followed by tourists from China and North America.

The money spent by visitors in the capital of Great Britain also made only the sum of £2.01 billion (US$3.25 billion) – £120 million less than last year.

Meanwhile, the cost of the London Olympics was about £9 billion, so the figures of tourist arrivals and their spending do not look very positively. This is not the first time when such negative effect on tourism could be observed during the Olympics – Beijing and Athens saw the same fall of industry.

London hosts E-Commerce exhibition

On October 2- 3, the Event and Conference Venue of Olympia Exhibition in London will host E-Commerce Expo 2012 – the No. 1 event in the United Kingdom focused on online retailing. It is already the sixth year when the exhibition attracts e-commerce decision makers and interested visitors from many industry sectors, including Retail, Media, IT/Telecom, Logistics/Travel and Services providers.

The exhibitors offer technologies, processes and services focusing on the e-commerce transaction. During the exhibition, seminars and presentations are held, providing the opportunity to hear about the latest technologies in all the spheres of digital commerce. The main areas of e-commerce covered on the London expo are Digital and Mobile Marketing, eCommerce, Payment and Security, Fulfilment, Delivery and Retention.

The event is organized by UBMLive, and may be interesting to those who are looking to increase their online sales.