A report by hotels.com suggests that while the Royal Wedding will attract inbound tourists to the UK, tens of thousands of Britons are planning on taking a foreign holiday during the week.

According to booking activity on the hotels.com website, visitors from the US seem the keenest to experience the Royal Wedding with searches for London currently up by 189 per cent compared to the same period in 2010.

Searches are also up in Japan and France - by 117 per cent and 124 per cent respectively.

But hotel operators in the capital hoping to cash in on the week might lose out on domestic business, as searches for accommodation abroad on hotel.com's UK site for the week ending 29 April are up by 212 per cent compared to last year's bank holiday week.

Many look set to take advantage of the additional bank holiday and searches for the Spanish holiday island Tenerife (up 154 per cent) and Marrakech in Morocco (235 per cent) are proving popular.