Economic Impact of the Royal Wedding

With the announcement of the Royal wedding next year, the press had gone into hyperbole, with many newspapers claiming that the wedding will bring an estimated £1billion bonus to the British economy.

Hold on a minute. How much? There will, we are sure, be an economic surge, due to an increase in merchandising, media spend, advertising and increased hotel and tourism revenue but it is questionable whether that money will be a direct benefit to the UK economy

If such a major event raises revenue for the taxman then it should follow that that revenue should be spent on priority areas such as housing, welfare and health, not on subsidising a wedding of two 28 year old royals.

"But it is highly questionable that the event will boost the economy and we challenge those who say it will to show their evidence."

"We see no evidence that this event will generate any more revenue than a major football fixture - so subsidising the wedding would be no more tolerable than subsidising Wayne Rooney's salary."

"The figures being bandied about by the press this morning look like a lot of wishful thinking and make-believe."

"We would in particular challenge the comments of Sandie Dawe, chief executive of VisitBritain, who has said the wedding would “be an enormous boost for tourism”. We are asking her to retract her statement that the royals generated £500m in revenues for tourism each year as her
organisation's research makes no such claim."




NOTES

According to the FT Stefan Szymanski, economics professor at London’s Cass business school, said there was little evidence of public events lifting the economy, particularly when no new infrastructure is built.

The VisitBritain report published earlier this year said that heritage tourism, not the royal family, raised £500m a year. That is tourism to do with Britain's history, not the monarchy.