The proportion of travellers arriving in the UK in August who said Covid-19 testing was very important fell over the previous month.
It was the first month where less than half of UK residents interviewed felt testing was very important, new ONS data reveals.
Most returning UK travellers said they found following overseas Covid-19 restrictions either difficult, or very difficult (79%).
But conversely most overseas residents said that they understood UK Covid restrictions either quite well, or very well.
Just under three quarters of people from both UK and overseas arriving into the UK in August said the wearing of face coverings made them feel safe during their journey.
The majority of UK (87%) and overseas (88%) residents leaving the UK said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the number of travellers wearing face coverings at the airport.
Most UK residents arriving back (82%) and departing the UK (96%), had been vaccinated in August.
More than half of UK (59%) and overseas residents (65%) interviewed felt safe with social distancing during their journey.
The majority of UK (81%) and overseas residents (80%) leaving the UK remained satisfied or very satisfied with their ability to keep a safe distance from other passengers while at the airport.
Meanwhile, the ONS is to run consultation until December 21 on plans to overhaul travel and tourism statistics in an attempt to make them more timely, robust and detailed.
The International Passenger Survey (IPS) is currently the main source to measure international travel and tourism statistics.
ONS said: “The foundation of our proposed new approach involves a hybrid model with less reliance on this survey and which maximises the use of alternative data sources.
“In order to get user feedback on our proposals, we are opening a formal consultation today which will run until Tuesday 21 December 2021.
“We will then build on the consultation response by publishing our planned way forward for travel and tourism statistics in early 2022.”
The proposals include:
- Using aggregated and anonymised mobile connection and financial transaction data, with potential that further sources could be included to offer added benefits to users in the future
- Estimates of the number of visits and the associated spend of foreign visitors will continue to be measured using a passenger survey, with data collected from foreign residents on departure from the UK at the end of their visit.
- Estimates for international and domestic visits of UK residents will be measured using a household survey.
- A plan to produce faster indicators of travel and tourism that will be published alongside the transformed statistics. The faster indicators will offer users a “more timely” measure of visitor numbers and spend and will be produced using alternative data sources and statistical models.