LATEST tourism figures show visits to the city are up six per cent.

Brighton and Hove’s £1 billion-a-year tourism industry bounced back from poor numbers in 2015, with a 6.4 per cent increase in trips and a 3.2 per cent increase in expenditure in 2016.

The research presented at Thursday’s tourism committee showed overnight visits, day trips, domestic visitors, foreign visitors and expenditure were all up on 2015.

The figures, compiled by Tourism South East, were greeted with delight by tourism committee chairman Alan Robins. He told The Argus: “I’m thrilled.

“There’s only one small caveat which is they’ve changed the methodology so it’s difficult to compare like with like.

“But by any measure these are looking better.

“I feel pretty good about it. I took a lot of stick last year when they weren’t so good

“I think we’ve continued on with what we believe in and what we feel works and these numbers are showing, hopefully, we were right. I feel a little vindicated.

“I feel really pleased, not only for us and the council but for everybody who’s worked for it and benefited from it.

“It’s a city-wide effort and everybody who’s had something to do with it should feel pleased.”

The figures reveal an estimated 1,607,000 “staying trips” were spent in Brighton and Hove in 2016, of which about 1,228,000 were made by domestic visitors and 379,000 by overseas visitors.

Compared with 2015, total overnight trip volume increased by 10.4 per cent.

Overnight trips resulted in an estimated 5,021,000 visitor nights spent in the city, up half a per cent.

Staying visitors spent, in total, £533 million on their trip, up by 1.4 per cent.

The 2016 numbers also show an increase in tourism day trips with 9.6 million trips made in 2016, up by 5.8 per cent from 2015, with spend by daytrippers increasing by 6.2 per cent to £353 million.

Total expenditure by visitors is estimated to have been in the region of £885.9 million in 2016, an increase of 3.2 per cent compared with 2015.

The report stated: “The methodology has changed from that used in previous years... comparisons have been shown throughout this report but caution should be used when interpreting any direct year-on-year comparisons.”

The figures have not yet recovered to their 2014 peak of 10 million day trips.