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Key facts and figures

Tourism directly contributes more than £10bn per year to the South East economy. Around one-quarter of a million people are employed in the tourism industry in the region,

During 2005, there were 194 million day trips to the region, and 23.3 million stays of one night or more. Staying visitors spent more than £4.1bn in the region.

Of those visitors who stayed for at least one night in the south east, 18.2 million were UK residents and 4.1 million came from overseas. The largest proportions of visitors were on holiday (ie visiting purely for pleasure/leisure) or visiting friends or relatives.

The most popular visitor attractions (charging admission fees) included Canterbury Cathedral, which recorded more than one million visits, closely followed by Windsor Castle (945,000 visits), with RHS Garden Wisley, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Hop Farm Country Park In Kent and Tulleys Farm in West Sussex all recorded more than 500,000 visits.