London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are among the top bookings for European holidaymakers this summer according to Hotel and Flight search engine, Jetcost UK which saw a 250% increase in searches for UK flights and a 330% increase in hotels for the first seven months of 2022.

According to the data, searches for UK holidays in August exceeded the same period in 2019 (the last year before the pandemic) by more than 30%.

German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese tourists favor the UK capital London as their first choice while Manchester comes second, particularly for Portuguese visitors.

Away from the capital, the North West has several cities at the top of Europeans’ searches with Manchester the second most searched city in the UK for Portuguese tourists, third for Germans, French and Dutch and fourth for to the Spanish and Italians. Liverpool and Blackpool also rank highly.

In the midlands, Birmingham and Nottingham are most favored by Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese tourists with only Germans not in their top 10.

Bristol leads the South West as the fifth most popular UK destination for Spanish and Italians, seventh for Germans and French and eighth for the Dutch. In addition, Newquay came in as the sixth favorite city of the Germans and the twelfth of the Portuguese.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all looked for Europeans in Edinburgh for their capital cities. Cardiff and Belfast are particularly popular with Germans and Italians.

Ignazio Ciarmoli, Marketing Director of Jetcost, said: “Normality is here and with it the millions of tourists who visited every summer before the pandemic. UK cities remain major global tourist destinations, with their cultural wealth, attractions, coastline and scenery, popular traditions, castles, churches and monuments, and beautiful hotels and infrastructure that continue to attract large numbers of tourists. On the other hand, many Britons also choose national cities for their vacations, in addition to the main cities in Europe and sun and beach destinations in Spain, where their good prices, rich gastronomy and nightlife continue to attract UK tourists”.

Top 5 UK Cities by Country

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