Tourism Alliance has labelled the government's thinking towards the UK tourism industry as "confused", following chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement.

Osborne confirmed an increase in Air Passenger Duty (APD) at double the rate of inflation - to come into effect in April - will be pursued, with details to be outlined on 6 December.

However, Tourism Alliance said the announcement had come three weeks after VisitBritain was allocated £27m worth of additional funding to help attract more overseas visitors.

The national tourism agency is aiming to increase inbound visitor numbers by 4.6 million from existing markets, as well as from emerging markets such as India and China.

Such an increase would be worth at least £2.6bn to the UK economy and create new jobs, but Tourism Alliance said pressing ahead with the APD hike showed 'inconsistency'.

Tourism Alliance chair Brigid Simmonds said: "The chancellor himself stated in his speech that now was not a time to increase environmental taxes to the detriment of creating jobs in UK businesses.

"Yet tourism is already one of the UK's biggest export industries contributing £19bn per annum in revenue for the UK economy and supporting 380,000 jobs."

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