Of course, London played its part, enjoying a bumper summer boosted by Prince George’s birth, Andy Murray’s historic Wimbledon triumph and plenty of hot weather that confirmed its place as the world’s favourite destination. And yet could this undoubtedly good performance have been even better with earlier reform to long-winded visa processing and if tourist body VisitBritain’s budget had not been chopped?

“I prefer to trade in facts, not opinions,” Christopher Rodrigues says of the progress being made in the area of visas — but it is a comment that might as well apply to my entire conversation with the VisitBritain chairman.

He can be forgiven for feeling pleased with himself. The former Bradford Bingley and Thomas Cook boss has piloted the industry through the Olympics — a crucial time to market host cities that invariably sees visitor numbers tumble. Now the “cunning plan” is to continue the upward momentum, hence targets of winning an extra seven million visits to Britain by 2020, with £10 billion in extra spending.

“The real push is to make sure that once you’ve seen it on TV you want to come and do it yourself, as it were,” he explains over coffee. Rodrigues even found himself at the heart of one of the events that has drawn visitors to the capital. Part of two winning Boat Race crews while at Cambridge, he got soaking wet powering the Gloriana down the Thames behind Sir Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent in the Diamond Jubilee pageant two years ago.

But what about visas? The all-important Chinese travellers on a tour of Europe are less inclined to bolt on Britain too because of the need for extra paperwork. With Britain never going to join the cross-border Schengen agreement, the solution is to process applications in tandem with Europe. Rodrigues has prowled around the operations centre in Beijing, where he reports that processing times are down to five days or fewer in some cases, with volumes up. “In the longer term it is seeing this country really participating in the development of electronic visas,” says Rodrigues, 64. “If you want the benchmark visa-processing market in the world, it is Australia: online applications, or you can do it as you fly — literally.”

VisitBritain’s plan is to sell experiences, such as golf or theatre breaks, rather than a specific city or county. The buzz phrase “London-plus” describes how the body wants tourists drawn to the capital to venture outside as well — a challenge in particular to persuade North Americans and Continental Europeans to make the effort. Breaking open the numbers throws up some interesting facts. Never mind the Chinese for a moment — the idea that Britain is living through a golden era for tourism coincides with the loss of one million American visitors in little more than a decade.

“They are much more experienced travellers now so, guess what, they explore the world, as they should,” he explains simply.

For all the attention the Chinese visitors get — and their love of splashing the cash in Bond Street — their numbers are relatively small. “They spend less in hotels and restaurants, reflecting that they are less mature travellers.  They don’t tend to eat ethnic food other than their own — yet.”

In fact, at less than 200,000 visitors a year, there are fewer Chinese arrivals than Russians, whom hoteliers see as more adventurous and “having a lot of money — and spending it”.

The focus on visas coincides with some sniping that the Government is less focused on tourism than hot areas such as manufacturing. Rodrigues concedes that the ministerial brief has been passed around rather a lot.

“I’ve seen all flavours and all varieties. I’ve been in this job seven years and had seven secretaries of state and seven ministers, so you become reasonably competent at briefing. It’s good when they stay around for a while.” And even when they do hang on, that’s when they find the time to dispense some tough love.

“[Former culture secretary] Jeremy Hunt absolutely saw the potential around the Olympics — he cut our budget and told us to double our money with partnership marketing and build the best Olympic tourist marketing campaign. Results show the team did it.”

The model meant the VisitBritain team had to drum up funds to match their measly £20 million budget — half the sum Rodrigues had when he took over — from the likes of foreign airlines Emirates, Qatar and Etihad.

“It is a cracking return on investment,” says Rodrigues. “Frankly we could match up to another £10 million.” In a more encouraging move, £90 million is being thrown at the “Great” advertising campaign over the next two years, targeting would-be tourists from the Gulf States, America and Brazil.

Would life be easier if VisitBritain were transplanted from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport into the Department for Business, Innovation Skills, as some leisure chiefs would like? (It is presently billeted in the Department for Education building in Westminster, but that is another matter).

He is sceptical. “Do I think if we had a minister in a different position the Treasury would give us more money? Not automatically, no. You have to make the case by results, not just by shouting. The thing about tourism is it is a skewer that goes sideways through Government.”

Rodrigues’ career has been characterised by great variety, even if things haven’t always gone his way. He was forced out of Thomas Cook after the tour operator was bought by German bank WestLB.

At Bradford Bingley, he campaigned against demutualisation but when members voted it through anyway, he gamely built the former building society into a FTSE 100 business, only for his successor to unpick most of acquisitions.

“I think if it was a mutual it would still be there,” he says of the bank that was nationalised in the financial crisis and mostly folded into Santander. A model of Bradford Bingley’s “conversion bus” still sits in his office. In effect, the opposite happened to Rodrigues at Visa. He recommended the American credit-card payments firm should float, only to discover that made him surplus to requirements.

“That’s life isn’t it? You take a job, you do what needs to be done and you live with the consequences. If you look at what has happened I’ve been lucky enough to go from one interesting role to another.”

He was appointed to VisitBritain by then-culture secretary Tessa Jowell, who recognised his time at Visa, a long-time Olympics sponsor, would be handy. The role runs to the end of the year, but he insists there is still work to do.

“For example, I would love the rail operators to worry more about making it easy for foreigners to buy tickets in advance in their own language.” As he gets up to leave, Rodrigues raves about the simplicity of the Swiss Railways website but says Trenitalia takes some working out. “But if you are a travel buff like me you do that because you are strange and you prefer it to Sudoku.”

LIFE AND TIMES

CV MILESTONES

1971 Spillers Foods graduate trainee

1976 McKinsey Company engagement manager

1979 American Express vice president, rising to travel management managing director

1988 Thomas Cook chief operating officer, later chief executive

1996 Bradford Bingley chief executive

2004 Visa International president and chief executive

2007 VisitBritain chairman

PERSONAL LIFE

Married with two children, and one grandson, also called Christopher. Relaxes by cooking and still rows occasionally. Chairman of Almeida Theatre and celebrated Lizzy Yarnold’s gold medal in Sochi as chairman of the British Bobsleigh Skeleton Association.

BEST ADVICE I’VE RECEIVED

“George Waters, the man who created the American Express card, said you only have one job in your professional career and that is to leave an organisation in a better condition than it was when you arrived. Broadly speaking, I’ve been able to do that.”