More than 50,000 travellers took advantage of the first-ever all-night services on the London Underground on Friday night, with officials hailing a “superb start” to the long anticipated night tube.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, was on board the first Victoria line service in the early hours of Saturday, telling fellow passengers they were “making history” by riding on the tube’s first all-night trains. “You can feel the buzz, you can feel the vibe. People are really excited,” Khan told the Press Association.

Oxford Circus was one of the busiest stations, with 6,500 people tapping in, while 4,250 people tapped out at Stratford station, according to figures released by Transport for London.

Mark Wild, London Underground’s managing director, said: “Night tube got off to a superb start last night with thousands of people making use of the new services. I was out on the network myself last night, seeing our staff and British Transport police (BTP) officers helping customers travel around the capital safely.”

A spokeswoman for the BTP said it had been called to just four incidents on the first run of the night tube, which was “in line with what we would expect to see on a Friday night”.

“At this stage we are not aware of any crimes being committed,” she added.

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Arriving a year later than the date pledged by London’s former mayor, Boris Johnson, and limited initially to just two of the 11 lines, the new service was trumpeted on Friday by Khan, who said that passengers would include nurses, security guards, tourists and even “a middle-aged clubber like me coming home after a late night out with your missus”.

Above ground, however, businesses ranging from hotels to pubs and retailers are hoping for an immediate fillip from the introduction of a service tipped to add as much as £77m to London’s economy annually and generate up to 2,200 new jobs.

The phased move into 24-hour operation begins with trains running all night on Fridays and Saturdays on the Central line, the tube’s main east-west artery, and the Victoria line, which runs from Brixton to Walthamstow Central. With trains roughly every 10 minutes through the night, Transport for London (TfL) said nocturnal journeys would be 20 minutes quicker on average, with many passengers saving more than an hour.

On the high street the first tentative economic ripples from the service were in evidence on Friday with an announcement by Tesco that several of its stores would be opening for 24 hours on a trial basis along the Victoria and Central lines.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sadiq Khan in front of a new night tube’s logo. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

“A night service is long overdue from London’s perspective and from an international one,” said David Lutton of the business lobby group London First, which co-authored a report into the impact of the service. Its supporters say London will now be able to compete with other “24-hour” European cities, including Amsterdam and Berlin.

“New York has had one for more than a century for example, so it’s taken a while to catch up,” said Lutton. “What this particularly will give a boost to is the kind of leisure, hospitality and retail sectors of London which are already incredibly critical in terms of attracting the 35 million tourists who come here every year.”

The service also feeds into changing labour trends, according to Lutton, which have seen people working later. “In a lot of ways the demand for 24-hour transport is employment-driven rather than entertainment-driven and if you think about it, small changes in productivity can make a big difference. That’s anything from an investment banker working late to the film and production companies of Soho who are exporting digital expertise to the west coast of the US and have to work to their client’s time expectations.”

Concerns remain however not just about the social impact of the change, but also around claims by some industry cheerleaders that existing licensing regimes in parts of the city will prevent the night-time economy from fully benefiting.

Alan D Miller, chair of the Night Time Industries Association, said that his members were looking forward to a service that would “prevent the last meal rush to get the last tube” but had concerns that much of London’s nightlife was being suffocated.

“It’s come in a week when some of the best clubs in London have been in all sorts of trouble,” he said, instancing the case of the iconic nightclub Fabric, which closed its doors indefinitely this week as police investigate the drug-related deaths of two teenagers within weeks of each another.

“The night tube is fantastic but we need somewhere to go. There are premises with licences that allow them to be open post-midnight through to 6am but there are only a few in London which are almost 24 hours and they are rapidly diminishing. We allegedly have 24-hour licensing but in many areas people have had venues reviewed and closed down by local authorities.”

Khan has spoken of wanting to help London’s nightclubs to “flourish” and prevent a situation where young and creative Londoners abandon the city for Amsterdam, Berlin, or Prague.

An investment of £3.4m by his mayoralty will result in about 100 British Transport police officers being on patrol across the network on Friday and Saturday nights. Supt Chris Horton, the officer responsible for policing on the underground, said there was no reason for passengers to be less safe than during the day. He said officers would focus on being visible and “in places that are likely to see significant issues”.