Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The International Passenger Survey (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.
There are three versions of the IPS data, the travelpac version the simplest both in format and ease of use, the reduced version used for fuller queries but restricted in the number of variables and the main data for expert users which contain all analysable variables. Travelpac dataset - for simple data queries, users may prefer to use these data as they are extremely simple and can be joined together to form a time series. The results should be consistent with those published by ONS in Travel Trends. Reduced dataset - the depositor recommends using this dataset for fuller queries as it contains most of the important analysable information and will due to their nature be much easier to understand and tabulate. Although the variable list is the same from year to year, care must be taken with these files when trying to perform time series operations as codes can also vary from year to year for some variables. Main dataset - The depositor recommends that only expert users who are very familiar with the coding and weighting structures use this dataset 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 years dataset are used in other years. The data comprises four files, ALCOHOL, AIRMILES, QREGTOWN and QCONTACT with four quarters per file, with the exception of ALCOHOL which covers all four quarters in one file. These can be joined together using the variables YEAR, SERIAL, FLOW and QUARTER. The weighting of IPS data is complex and done in several stages. When working with the system weights, great care should be taken to read the documentation concerning weighting procedures as not all records are treated in exactly the same way (this does not apply to the smaller datasets).
Main Topics:
The travelpac dataset for 1997 contains the following 14 variables: Year; quarter; ukos; mode of travel; purpose of visit; package tour; country of visit/residence; age group; gender; length of stay; visits; expenditure; number of nights spent on trip; sample. The reduced dataset for 1997 contains the following 24 variables: Year; quarter; month; flow; purpose of visit; package tour; country of visit/residence; states within countries for overseas residents; United Kingdom counties; nationality of contact; age group; gender; people; United Kingdom airport, sea route or tunnel mode; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; ossport; mode of travel used; number in vehicle; type of flight; class of travel; number of nights spent on trip; expenditure; weight of contact. The main dataset for 1997 contains 128 variables and covers: AIRMILES - quarter; month; flow; serial; United Kingdom port or route; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; distance from United Kingdom port to first port; from first to second port; from United Kingdom port to second port. ALCOHOL - year; quarter; month; flow; serial; money spent on spirits; wine; beer; tobacco. QREGTOWN - year; quarter; month; flow; serial; towns stayed in overnight; number of nights spent in towns; expenditure in towns; regional stay weight; regional visit weight; regional expenditure weight; various validation checks. QCONTACT - year; quarter; month; flow; serial; nationality; country of visit/residence; United Kingdom counties; date visit began; purpose of visit; business reason; intended length of stay; number of people; package tour and cost; expenditure pre, post and during visit; flight prefix and suffix; first and second carrier air or shipping line; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; long or short haul; United Kingdom airports; type of vehicle; number travelling in vehicle; fare type and cost; class of travel; business trip; type of flight; flight origin and destination; gender; age group; United Kingdom port or route; quality of response; date of interview; money transfer, total expenditure; weighting variables; various validation checks.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Face-to-face interview
