VisitBritain expects Indian visitors to spend £865 million ($1.1 billion) in the UK in 2026, and it wants that figure to reach roughly £1.5 billion ($2 billion) by 2030. The arithmetic is blunt: arrivals must climb from about 600,000 this year to 960,000, and the spending must happen outside London.

The structural problem is distribution. About 94% of direct seat capacity between India and the UK lands in the capital, leaving regional airports fighting for the remainder of a growing route map.

"Our target as a government body is all about growth outside London," VisitBritain CEO Patricia Yates told Skift, speaking on the sidelines of the Great North Destination Showcase in India. Her task is giving Indian travelers practical reasons and practical ways to book beyond the capital.

What stands between the forecast and the revenue?

Yates frames the challenge as conversion, not arrivals. London's familiarity risks a "been there, done that" response from repeat visitors, which caps spend growth even as arrival numbers rise. Regional dispersal depends on two levers: direct access to airports like Manchester, which Yates said has 50% spare runway capacity, and packaging regional attractions into itineraries the travel trade is confident selling.

Connectivity is already moving. IndiGo's paused flights to Manchester are set to return, restoring a non-London option that sellers can build packages around. For regional DMOs and northern England hotels, that capacity is the difference between appearing in a bookable itinerary and not appearing at all.

Business travel offers a second lever. Indian business travelers account for 22% of arrivals but 36% of spending, a yield gap that makes them the highest-value segment in the market. Yates sees the UK-India trade agreement, in force since July, as a mechanism to convert business trips into leisure stays — extending length of stay and pushing spend into regions.

Who else is bidding for the same travelers?

Competition for Indian outbound demand has hardened. Abu Dhabi, Australia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka are all courting the segment with visa waivers, bid funds and targeted campaigns. Visa friction is a pricing variable for sellers; a waiver can shift share faster than a marketing push.

VisitBritain's response includes:

• A screen-tourism campaign built around film and television locations outside the capital
• Influencer partnerships and visibility in AI-recommendation channels, where itinerary discovery increasingly happens
• Trade-facing work to convert business arrivals into bleisure (business-plus-leisure) stays

The £1.5 billion projection assumes those levers hold against better-funded rivals. The 2026 baseline of £865 million is a forecast; the 2030 figure is a target, not a booking trend. Whether dispersal works will show up first in load factors on regional routes and in itinerary mix sold through the Indian trade.

What should sellers watch next?

Two numbers will signal whether the strategy is working: the share of India-UK capacity not bound for London, and the spend-per-visit gap between the 22% of arrivals who are business travelers and the rest of the market. Manchester's spare runway capacity and IndiGo's regional return give the trade inventory to sell; converting it depends on whether repeat Indian visitors can be persuaded there is more to the UK than a city they have already seen.