DESTINATION LONDON THE EXPANSION OF THE VISITOR ECONOMY EDITED BY ANDREW SMITH and ANNE GRAHAM Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy Edited by Andrew Smith and Anne Graham University of Westminster Press www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Published by University of Westminster Press 115 New Cavendish Street London W1W 6UW www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Text © the editors and several contributors 2019 First published 2019 Cover and back cover image: Diana Jarvis; Front cover image: Tristan Luker Print and digital versions typeset by Siliconchips Services Ltd. ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-912656-26-4 ISBN (PDF): 978-1-912656-27-1 ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-912656-28-8 ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-912656-29-5 DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book35 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This license allows for copying and distributing the work, provid ing author attribution is clearly stated, that you are not using the material for commercial purposes, and that modified versions are not distributed. The full text of this book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For full review policies, see: http://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/ site/publish. Suggested citation: Smith, A. and Graham, A. (eds.) 2019. Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book35 License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi.org/10.16997/ book35 or scan this QR code with your mobile device: Contents Acknowledgements vii 1. Destination London: An Expanding Visitor Economy 1 Andrew Smith 2. Extending the Frontiers of City Tourism: Suburbs and the Real London 15 Robert Maitland 3. Unplanned Expansions: Renting Private Homes to Tourists 37 Clare Inkson 4. Aerotropolis: London’s Airports as Experiences and Destinations 61 Anne Graham 5. The City of Sport: London’s Stadiums as Visitor Attractions 91 Claire Humphreys 6. Vertical City Tourism: Heightened Aesthetic and Kinaesthetic Experiences 117 Andrew Smith 7. London’s ‘Unseen Tours’: Slumming or Social Tourism? 141 Claudia Dolezal and Jayni Gudka 8. The River Thames: London’s Riparian Highway 165 Simon Curtis 9. Festive Space and Dream Worlds: Christmas in London 183 Adam Eldridge and Ilaria Pappalepore 10. Event Takeover? The Commercialisation of London’s Parks 205 Andrew Smith 11. Conceptualising the Expansion of Destination London: Some Conclusions 225 Andrew Smith iv Contents List of Editors and Contributors 237 List of Figures 241 List of Tables 243 Index 245 Dedication This book is dedicated to Simon Curtis, who died suddenly in January 2019 just after the final manuscript was submitted to the publishers. Simon was a much- loved and much-admired member of the Tourism and Events team at the Uni- versity of Westminster and he will be greatly missed by everyone who worked with him. He was an enthusiastic champion of the project to write a book about tourism in London and we are so sad that he never got to see the text published. Simon joined the University in 2011 after a distinguished career in tourism consultancy and destination management, working as Head of Tourism at Kent County Council and Head of Tourism and Heritage at Medway Council. He was a passionate advocate for heritage and the restoration of historic buildings. Simon passed this enthusiasm on to the next generation through his Heritage Tourism module, which was extremely popular with our students. The chapter on the River Thames that Simon wrote in this volume is typical of his work in its thoughtfulness, its clarity and its obvious passion for the subject matter. Since his death, the first lines of Simon’s chapter – taken from a Song by Wallace and O’Hogan – have taken on a new resonance: ‘Kingdoms may come, kingdoms may go; whatever the end may be, Old Father Thames keeps rolling along; down to the mighty sea’. Simon, this book is dedicated to you. Acknowledgements This book has been produced collaboratively by members of theTourism and Events Research Group at the University of Westminster and we would like to thank members of this Group – past and present – for their contributions. Tourism research at Westminster has a significant pedigree. For several dec- ades the University has hosted a group of tourism researchers within a School dedicated to the study of architecture and related built environment disciplines (transport, planning, construction, urban design). Analysing tourism from an urban planning and/or place-based perspective is something unique to West- minster and this approach underpins the work presented here. We would also like to thank Jayni Gudka for her insights into social tourism in general, and Unseen Tours in particular, that have informed Chapter 7. The idea for an edited collection on Destination London was first mooted back in 2009, so it has taken a decade to come to fruition. Several people have helped to make this idea a reality. Andrew Lockett at the University of West- minster Press has provided unwavering support since we first suggested the idea of a book on tourism in London. We would also like to thank the exter- nal reviewers who provided valuable feedback at various stages. Tristan Luker gave us permission to use some of his brilliant images of London to illustrate the book, including the one on the front cover. Thank you, Tristan – you can see more of his work at www.tristanluker.com. Two other people also contrib- uted images for the book. Mason Edwards (www.masonedwardsdesign.co.uk) viii Acknowledgements produced some of the figures and diagrams, and one of our former students, Eman Mustafa, kindly agreed to let us use several of her photographs. Thanks you to both. We would also like to thank the School of Architecture + Cities for funding publication costs including the costs of several images licensed from the RIBA Collection. The book’s editors and contributors are pleased to declare that they have no competing interests though, as noted in the biographical profiles at the end of the book, some have undertaken consultancy work either as individuals or Westminster staff members. Jayni Gudka’s contribution toChapter 7 reflects her experience leading Unseen Tours’ Responsible Tourism and Communica- tions work. CHAPTER 1 Destination London: An Expanding Visitor Economy Andrew Smith Introduction No city in the world is better covered by literature – fictional and non-fictional – than London. From Pepys, via Dickens, to Ackroyd, London has benefited from a series of talented historians, novelists and commentators who have provided detailed accounts of the city’s condition. In the past few years a new tranche of books has been published on the contemporary character of the UK capital: with Anna Minton’s Big Capital, Rowan Moore’s Slow Burn City, Ben Judah’s This is London and Iain Sinclair’s The Last London notable examples. One thing that unites these otherwise excellent accounts is the conspicuous absence of discussions about the city’s visitor economy. This is a notable omission, given the scale and significance of tourism in London. Over the years, the city has earned various nicknames that purport to represent its essential nature: ‘the great wen’; ‘the big smoke’; ‘the city of villages’. But the epithet that perhaps best represents contemporary London might be: ‘the city of tourists’ or Destination London. London hosts a very significant visitor economy and overnight visitors contribute approximately £14.9 billion of expenditure to the city every year How to cite this book chapter: Smith, A. 2019. Destination London: An Expanding Visitor Economy. In: Smith, A. and Graham, A. (eds.) Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy. Pp. 1–13. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/ book35.a. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 2 Destination London (London and Partners 2017). When the city hosted the Olympic and Para- lympic Games in 2012 the UK’s capital was already a leading global destina- tion, but staging this mega-event instigated a new period of growth. In the period 2011–2016 tourism numbers increased by 25 per cent and over the past few years the city has experienced a series of record years for arrivals. Despite already being one of the three most visited cities in the world − hosting 31.2 million overnight visitors in 2016 − city officials expect visitor arrivals to increase further: to over 40 million overnight visitors by 2025 (London and Partners 2017). Put simply, tourism is already a very significant economic and social phenomenon in London, but over the next few decades it will become even more pivotal and pervasive. London’s status as one of the world’s most visited destinations is not uni- versally welcomed. At the moment there is considerable media and academic attention dedicated to the problem of rapid tourism growth and what has become known as overtourism. This coverage has focused on various Euro- pean capitals: from Berlin to Barcelona, Ljubljana to Lisbon. Even though the UK’s capital city seems like the ideal case through which to explore the ways that destinations evolve and expand, there has been surprisingly little attention devoted to London in these debates. This book explores how and why tourism is growing in Europe’s most popular city destination; and what benefits and problems accrue from expanding the tourism sector in a city already hosting 19 million overseas tourists and 12 million overnight domestic visitors every year. These additional people mean London’s population grows considerably every day, especially when one considers the 300,000 people that commute daily to the capital from outside Greater London and the daily influx of 750,000 non-staying visitors.