When we're not tutting at them on escalators, being shoved in the face by their backpacks on the tube or sighing as they hog the pavement during lunch hour when we really need to rush to Marks and Spencer, we sometimes feel sorry for tourists. The tube is bewildering, tourist traps are dirty and expensive and us locals are all a bunch of unhelpful, miserable bastards: official. Seems the lot of the London tourist......

Nice as New Yorkers are, they have a well-deserved rep for defending their city's honour against the slings and arrows of outrageous slurs. We can only imagine that any visiting Manhattanites will be ready to rip London a new bagel-hole when they clap eyes on a new advert for Radisson hotels currently running on the Tube. It reads "Heavenly Peace in the City That Never Sleeps" but, in a moment of sacrilege to rival......

There was a bit of an awkward silence at London House in Beijing when the image of Myra Hindley flashed up during a video meant to promote London. A six-minute video by Visit London was playing on a loop at London House for a private audience. Unfortunately, while panning through an art gallery, one of the paintings featured is that of Myra Hindley's mug shot done in children's handprints. Though not a part of......

Barging through the throngs of camera-wielding tourists in Leicester square of a Saturday afternoon, it might not seem that London is in dire need of more visitors. But Visit London is aiming to do just that, by launching a £4m advertising campaign this weekend to attract more sightseers to the capital. The worldwide campaign launches as China hands over the Olympic cycle to Britain on Sunday, and will highlight London’s virtues as a holiday......

Following Westminster's purge of the Oxford Street sandwich boards whose draconian fines kicked in yesterday, the New West End Company (another of those BID companies) is also taking steps to improve the 'up West' shopping experience by quizzing its 100,000 retail staff on their knowledge of the "wonders" of the area. The company, funded by the area's businesses aims to make shopping in the West End a more pleasant experience for tourists and locals......

Blame the credit crunch, the pusillanimous dollar, or our overly expensive attractions: whatever the reason, tourist numbers dropped by 4% during 2007, after a downturn in the final six months of the year. Worse is expected: visitor levels are expected to drop 2.7% and 1.2% respectively over the next two years. The sharpest fall is in visitors from the States, where a queasy greenback is inclining Americans to visit cheaper shores (like almost anyplace else......

Love London as we do, we know that some of this city's tourist "attractions" don't exactly represent value for money. According to a survey by the Sunday Telegraph, London's fee-paying attractions are among the most expensive in the world. The newspaper compared the cost of visiting nine popular attractions in London and ten other cities across the world, and found that a sight-seeing trip here would trouble the family wallet by the sum of......

Fears that UK tourism won't be funded well enough to take advantage of the 2012 Olympics were broached today in a report from the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, Media and Sport with the £9m cut to Visit Britain's budget coming in for criticism. The report tells us that tourist trade isn't anticipating a major influx for the Games itself but the presence of 20,000 journalists in town to cover the event certainly provides an......

The little slice of subcontinental bureaucracy that is the Indian High Commission in Aldwych may soon bring to an end its long history of enraging and befuddling tourists. According to this report out of India, the High Commission will shortly bid "a cheery farewell to snaking queues, complaints of graft and grumpy customers" as it modernises its procedures. The visa issuing process has been outsourced to VFS Global, an outfit based, naturally, India, which......

Thrill-seekers, take note: the once destitute, now awesome O2 arena wants to become even more awesome. Since the Dome’s rebirth nearly a year ago, its owners have no doubt managed to squeeze a pretty penny or two out of the O2’s interior – what with all the purple rain, wannabes, and whole lotta love seen within its walls. And although Michael Jackson’s month-long moonwalk has yet to be confirmed, you might someday have the......

London is especially lovely in the summer months, so it comes as no surprise that visitors would want to come and bask in the capital’s loveliness while the sun is [usually] shining and the weather is [generally] mild. But this summer might be a bit different; according to Visit London, overseas tourism is expected to grow a mere 0.3%, the lowest since 2002. The main factor to blame is the credit crunch; while previously......

Credit crunch, you say? Bah, we're having none of it. Shops in the West End have punched above their weight so far this year: according to a new report from the British Retail Consortium, retail sales in London grew 10.5% in February, up from 3.8% in January, while footfall on the city's major shopping streets recorded a 4.3% year on year rise for March. All this in a climate where the national market is......

After the return of the great Led Zepp last year, their inflatable namesakes are making a comeback. Zeppelins are set to hove into view across the London skyline this summer, but thankfully their arrival isn't a new wave of Kaiser-directed aerial assault: they will be offering flights over the capital for tourists. German manufacturer Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik has been granted permission by the Civil Aviation Authority to fly the distinctive dirigibles over the city. The......

We've spent enough time wading through the flytipped rubbish on our street or struggling to blast the grime off our bodies following a grubby commute home to realise that London's not exactly the cleanest of places. But is it really the dirtiest city in Europe? In a shameless promotion, travel experts Trip Advisor commissioned a survey asking tourists to rank their likes and dislikes across a number of continental destinations, and London cleaned up......

Time was when it cost just a tenner and the promise of a better life to tempt British folk into a new life down under. Modern times call for modern measures, however, and an Aussie tourist board has found itself in hot water after besmirching the character of our cherished city. Marketing gurus for the Australian city of Adelaide, looking for new ways to entice people southwards, are running an advertising campaign featuring legends......

Lesser known areas of the capital may be in store for an influx of tourists. A report from the London Assembly is urging Visit London to promote attractions outside Central London, and the Chair of the Assembly’s Economic Development, Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee, Dee Doocey, fully supports the findings: "Outer London is home to a range of attractions that are less obvious but just as worth a visit as those that central London......

Michael Day, who heads up the Historic Royal Palaces charity (that's the Tower of London, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House in Whitehall and Kew Palace) has spoken out about the 'steep drop' in tourism since July 7. We've heard a lot about this since the summer but Today's Times reports Day as saying that the effect of the attacks "on visitor numbers and turnover had been far more severe than had been......