James Barber Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi Nick1962, > Love or hate the UK monarchy conceptually or > practically I suspect some of your information may > not be correct. > > UK tourismstates 2010 25M visitors to the whole of > the UK. But Paris tourism alone is stated at 42 > million visits. > So its not clear having a monarchy makes a big > difference to tourism for London or the UK when > compared to its nearest city state rival located > within a republic. Well, UK Tourism is doing itself a disservice, then. These figures on Wikipedia, claim that the most-visited city by international visitors is indeed Paris, with 15.2 million, while London comes in at 14.7 million. And Paris is much easier (and cheaper) to get to for other Europeans, so that's not a surprising figure. Having said that, I suspect that many visitors want to see the trappings of monarchy (Buck House, the Guards, Windsor etc) rather than the royals themselves.