International Passenger Survey, 2017

The data covers four subject areas, termed 'Airmiles', 'Alcohol', 'Qregtown' and 'Qcontact'. One file is produced each quarter per subject area, and the dataset updated quarterly. These files can be joined together using the variables YEAR, SERIAL, FLOW and QUARTER.<br> <br> The depositor recommends that only expert users who are very familiar with the coding and weighting structures use these data, as limited support is available. Some considerable understanding of the data is required before meaningful analyses can be made; care must be taken when performing time series operations as codes can vary from year to year and not all variables from one year's dataset are used in other years. <br> <br><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Latest edition information</span></p><p>For the fourth edition (July 2020), revised data files have been deposited. A weighting adjustment has been developed for data from 2009 onwards as a response to users' concerns over an imbalance between the IPS estimates for the number of visitors between departures and arrivals for different nationalities. Further information on the methodological change can be found in the document "IPS Methodological Improvements 2020", available as part of the documentation.</p> The <i>International Passenger Survey</i> (IPS) aims to collect data on both credits and debits for the travel account of the Balance of Payments, provide detailed visit information on overseas visitors to the United Kingdom (UK) for tourism policy, and collect data on international migration.<br>