About 214,000 visitors from China visited Britain in the first nine months last year, up 37 percent year-on-year, latest figures showed.

VisitBritain said Wednesday that the number of Chinese people who visited Britain from January to September in 2015 smashed previous records. It said spending by Chinese travelers also increased 4 percent to 435 million pounds (624 million U.S. dollars).

"China is the world's largest outbound market and a huge tourism opportunity for Britain. Chinese New Year is traditionally one of the busiest travel times for Chinese travellers and we want Britain to be at the top of their list as a must-go now destination," said Patricia Yates, director of VisitBritain.

With the statistics for the last quarter of 2015 to come, VisitBritain said the diversified celebrating activities to be held across the country for the forthcoming Chinese New Year are expected to attract more tourists from China.

Previous figures showed that Chinese visitors are already among Britain's highest spenders, spending an average of 2,688 pounds per person. VisitBritain plans to double spending from Chinese visitors to one billion pounds by 2020.