LONDON, ENGLAND.- Visitor research carried out at the National Gallery has highlighted the important economic impact of the Gallery's 2004/5 exhibition, 'Raphael: From Urbino to Rome', on London's tourism industry.

This exhibition attracted a significantly high number of visitors from outside London, 47% from within the UK and a further 17% from abroad, with many of these trips involving overnight stays in the capital. Of these visitors, nearly half (47%) had planned their trip to London mainly to see the exhibition.

Therefore, because of 'Raphael: From Urbino to Rome' at the National Gallery, about 69,187 visitors came to London and spent money here. Their resulting extra spending on refreshments, shopping, accommodation and travel represented valuable income for London. This boost to London's economy is a dramatic illustration of the power of art to generate economic benefits.

Calculations are inevitably uncertain, but MEW Research concluded from their survey work at the Gallery that the exhibition may have generated as much as £30 million additional economic activity in London, excluding the exhibition ticket sales.

The National Gallery has recently enjoyed a series of successful exhibitions, including 'Titian' (2002), 'El Greco' (2003) and the current show, 'Caravaggio: The Final Years'. This exhibition is enjoying enormous popularity with visitors from both the UK and abroad. Tickets for 'Caravaggio' are selling out on most days and it looks set to outnumber the final visitor figures for 'Raphael'.

Notes to editors: 'Raphael: From Urbino to Rome' was at the National Gallery from 20 October 2004 - 16 January 2005. It attracted 230,649 visitors in total.'Titian' attracted 267,939 visitors and 'El Greco' 221,542.

Research was carried out by MEW Research on selected weekdays, weekends and Wednesday evenings from 6 December 2004 - 14 January 2005. School and other youth parties, staff and people visiting the Gallery on business were screened out.

The additional income includes approximately £9 million spent by visitors staying in London and £10 million by day visitors. A further £1 million was spent on incidental internal expenditure at the Gallery (refreshments, retail and audio guides). This brings a total of £20 million to which the Treasury's approved multiplier of 1.5 is applied to bring a total of £30 million. (The multiplier reflects the domino effect of spending on national income. For example, if a copy of a newspaper is purchased, this generates income for the newsagent, who then spends some of it elsewhere in the UK and the chain continues. Therefore the final total impact on national income is greater than the original spend).