Somerset’s visitor economy is reported as being worth £1.3 billion and supporting 34,000 full-time-equivalent jobs. Other measures use narrower definitions or older reference periods, so the figures below keep their original dates, geographies and source labels clear.
Contents
- The scale of Somerset tourism
- Visitors, stays and spending
- Where tourism is concentrated
- Jobs, output and productivity
- Accommodation and visitor capacity
- Visit Somerset and visitor research
- North Somerset historical indicators
The scale of Somerset tourism
Visit Somerset LinkedIn reports that Somerset’s visitor economy is worth £1.3 billion. The same source reports 34,000 full-time-equivalent jobs supported by the visitor economy. These are broad visitor-economy measures, and they should not be treated as interchangeable with the narrower tourist-industry estimates reported for 2020.
The Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23 also puts tourism turnover in Somerset at £1.3 billion. It records 2.5 million staying visitors and 22 million day visitors. Together, those measures show how strongly Somerset’s tourism volume is weighted toward day trips, although the two visitor figures describe different visit types rather than a single undifferentiated total.
The same strategy says tourism employs 9% of Somerset’s workforce. In the strategy’s more localised measures, West Somerset has 26% of its workforce engaged in tourism, while the share rises to over 50% in Minehead and Brean. Those figures describe the importance of tourism to particular local labour markets, not the countywide rate.
Somerset Trends tourist industries gives a narrower, dated economic snapshot. In 2020, Somerset contributed £339 million in tourist-industry gross value added, or 3.1% of all economic output in the county. The dataset identifies this as a 2020 measure, so it is not a replacement for the broader £1.3 billion visitor-economy estimate.
Visitors, stays and spending
The Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23 records 2.5 million staying visitors and 22 million day visitors for Somerset. The distinction matters: a staying visitor contributes a trip with overnight accommodation, while a day visitor is counted without an overnight stay. The strategy therefore presents a visitor pattern dominated by day visits in absolute volume.
For UK visitors to Somerset, the typical average stay is 3 to 4 nights, according to the Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23. Overseas visitors to the area stay about 7 nights on average. The longer overseas stay is a useful indicator of differing trip patterns, but the source does not provide a matching spend figure for each group here.
Overseas visitors account for 8% of all Somerset visits in the same strategy. For Exmoor, the corresponding figure is 12%. These percentages refer to the geographies named by the source and should not be combined as if Exmoor were a separate countywide total.
The immediate Hinkley Point area has about £280 million in visitor spend, according to the Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23. The strategy also says that tourism around Hinkley Point accounts for 45% of all staying visits. Both figures are area-specific and should be read alongside, rather than added to, the countywide totals.
The Hinkley strategy reports that about 1,300 coaches pass through Cartgate Services on the A303 annually. This is a traffic-flow indicator for one transport location, not a count of all coach visitors to Somerset.
Where tourism is concentrated
The accommodation and visitor economy are unevenly distributed across Somerset. West Somerset has 27% more bed spaces in small serviced hotels, bed and breakfasts and self-catering cottages than Sedgemoor, according to the Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23.
Sedgemoor has 47% more bed spaces, pitches and units in camping, static and touring caravans and holiday centres than West Somerset. The two comparisons refer to different accommodation groupings, so the percentages should not be interpreted as a single overall capacity ranking.
The Hinkley strategy says caravan parks at Berrow and Brean, together with Butlins in Minehead, account for about one third of all visits to Somerset. This is a specific concentration measure for named destinations and accommodation attractions, not a claim that every Somerset visit is connected to those sites.
The distribution of economic output also varies by district. Somerset Trends tourist industries reports that, in 2020, Somerset West and Taunton contributed 34% of Somerset tourist-industry GVA. South Somerset contributed 24%, while Mendip and Sedgemoor each contributed 21%.
| Area | Share of Somerset tourist-industry GVA, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Somerset West and Taunton | 34% |
| South Somerset | 24% |
| Mendip | 21% |
| Sedgemoor | 21% |
These four shares describe the district contributions reported in Somerset Trends tourist industries. They total 100% within that source’s district breakdown, while the underlying GVA amount is £339 million.
Somerset’s visitor offer also includes long-distance and heritage attractions. VisitBritain Somerset reports that the South West Coast Path starts in Minehead and runs 630 miles, or 1,014 kilometres, to Poole. The same source says Wells Cathedral is 850 years old, its astronomical clock features jousting knights every 15 minutes, Somerset cider has been brewing for over 115 years, and the Museum of Somerset highlights over 400 million years of history in Taunton Castle.
Jobs, output and productivity
Somerset Trends tourist industries reports more than 18,964 full-time-equivalent tourist-industry jobs in Somerset in 2020. Those jobs represented 8.5% of all jobs in Somerset. The employment count is narrower than the 34,000 full-time-equivalent jobs attributed to the broader visitor economy by Visit Somerset LinkedIn.
The district employment concentrations reported for 2020 were 9.4% in Somerset West & Taunton and 9.7% in Mendip. These are the shares of local employment attributed to tourist industries in the Somerset Trends measure, rather than the countywide visitor-economy figure.
Tourist-industry productivity in Somerset was £17,890 in 2020. Somerset Trends tourist industries compares this with a county average of £48,440 and describes the tourist-industry figure as nearly 37% of that average. National tourist-industry productivity was £60,720.
The district figures in the same source show tourist-industry productivity of £17,340 in Mendip and £18,410 in Sedgemoor. The values provide context for the county measure, but the source does not establish that productivity is directly comparable across every local tourism business or accommodation type.
| Productivity measure | Value | Reference period |
|---|---|---|
| Somerset tourist industry | £17,890 | 2020 |
| Somerset county average | £48,440 | 2020 comparison |
| National tourist industry | £60,720 | 2020 comparison |
| Mendip tourist industry | £17,340 | 2020 |
| Sedgemoor tourist industry | £18,410 | 2020 |
The Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23 provides a separate labour-market perspective. It reports that 25,000 jobs will be created during the Hinkley Point C development and that 6,000 people will be employed at the peak of Hinkley Point C activity. These are development-related forecasts or planned activity figures in the strategy, not observed tourism employment totals.
Accommodation and visitor capacity
North Somerset’s historical indicators provide a separate, older view of visitor activity. The North Somerset culture, leisure and tourism topic paper reports visitor volume of over 6 million in 2006, visitor spending of over £274 million in 2006, tourism support for over 500 full-time-equivalent jobs in 2006, and tourism GVA of £164.16 million in 2006.
The cited North Somerset time series records 4,049 visitors in 1996 and 6,096 visitors in 2006. The source labels these as figures in its cited trend series; they should not be silently substituted for the broader “over 6 million” 2006 visitor-volume figure, which uses a different presentation in the same topic paper.
North Somerset had 1,200 touring pitches in 2001, with average occupancy of those touring pitches over the four peak summer months at 60%. It also had a little over 1,000 licensed static pitches in 2001.
Of the static pitches, about 840 were in the Kewstoke/Sand Bay area, about 100 were between Portishead and Clevedon, and about 75 were in the rural areas and Mendips. These figures describe the distribution reported for 2001 and are not current capacity estimates.
Four sites in and around Weston-super-Mare had permission or allocation for change of use to housing. The North Somerset culture, leisure and tourism topic paper says those four sites represented approximately 370 pitches. This is a planning and capacity indicator, not a measured loss of occupied visitor nights.
Visit Somerset and visitor research
The Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23 says the Somerset Tourism Association, now Visit Somerset, had about 360 members. It reports that Visit Somerset’s social media channels had a reach of 7 million and that the Visit Somerset website attracted just under 1 million visits per year.
The same strategy reports that Visit Exmoor has existed since 1981, has 150 members and attracts nearly 500,000 annual visitors to its website. These are organisation and digital-reach measures, not estimates of physical visits to Exmoor.
The strategy describes a visitor-research programme covering nearly 1,800 visitor surveys over two years. The surveys were delivered in four waves, across 25 locations in Somerset. Each survey included around 30 questions and took around 30 minutes to complete.
Across the four survey waves, Somerset’s visitor Net Promoter Score was 72%, according to the Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23. The strategy says the Hinkley Tourism Action Plan set a target for over 50% of visitors to recommend the area to others. It also set a target for 200 additional pieces of media coverage.
The 72% Net Promoter Score and the “over 50%” recommendation target are different measures: one is a reported result across the survey waves, while the other is a programme target. Keeping that distinction avoids treating the target as an observed visitor response.
North Somerset historical indicators
The North Somerset culture, leisure and tourism topic paper identifies Weston-super-Mare’s biggest market as day visitors. In the cited trend chart, day visitors were the majority of the increase in visitor numbers to Weston-super-Mare.
This historical pattern complements the countywide Somerset figures: the Hinkley Tourism Strategy 2020–23 reports 22 million day visitors compared with 2.5 million staying visitors. The measures cover different geographies and source contexts, so they are best used as separate indicators of the importance of day trips rather than added together.
North Somerset’s 2006 visitor spending figure was over £274 million, while its 2006 tourism GVA was £164.16 million. These measures are not interchangeable: spending describes visitor expenditure, whereas GVA describes the value added to the economy. Both are dated 2006 and should be interpreted as historical indicators.
The North Somerset accommodation figures are similarly time-specific. The 2001 touring-pitch count, 60% peak-summer occupancy and static-pitch distribution describe the capacity recorded in that period. Together with the approximately 370 pitches associated with four planned or permitted housing conversions, they show why accommodation statistics need both a measurement date and a clear distinction between existing stock and planning change.