Facts About UK Domestic Tourism
UK Domestic Tourism is Big Business
The UK domestic tourism industry supports a huge number of jobs and its infrastructure and activities underpin the social and economic fabric of many of our urban and rural communities. Nice places to live and work are usually also nice places to visit. We ignore at our peril the fact that visitors from near and far can help fuel the virtuous circle of demand, provision and investment, as much, if at times not more than, the resident population itself. Tourism’s wider social and economic role, particularly as a tool in regeneration, is now recognised. Consequently, national, regional and local government are now far more willing to invest into the core product and the necessary tourism support infrastructure that helps ensure that we all gain the maximum advantages from a strong domestic tourism market and the associated healthy local visitor economy surrounding it. The public sector’s display of confidence, in turn, has generated even greater private sector confidence, sparking serious commercial investment. Undoubtedly, financial conditions have recently become tough, but perversely, many of those conditions actually favour domestic holiday and leisure taking as UK residents realise that it is truly ‘Best in Britain’.
Tourism is now rightly regarded as a ‘proper industry’ and an industry with significant potential to bring additional domestic and international tourism growth. Its position as a major economic engine is demonstrated by the figures:
UK residents alone took 76.8 million domestic holidays within the UK in 2007, spending £14 billion. England accounted for 60.9 million of these holidays and £10.9 billion of the spend. In Wales the equivalent figures were 6.5 million holidays and £1.1 billion of the total spend, and in Scotland, 8.7 million holidays generated £1.9 billion. More UKTS data can be found on the VisitBritain site www.tourismtrade.org.uk
(Source: UKTS 2007; as at January 2009 the most up-to-date full year data available.)
Within this socially and economically vital industry the biggest single element remains the coastal sector, including within it the larger traditional seaside resorts and popular rural coastal destinations. Their contribution to the national tourism volume and value figures is impressive and worthy of individual note:
In 2007 UK residents took a total of 26.4 million seaside trips involving one or more overnight stays. This ‘all purposes’ figure includes trips visiting friends and relatives, business and conference trips and other non-‘holiday’ staying trips. Within the 26.4 million figure, 22 million trips were made purely for seaside holidays, generating a tourism spend of £4.5 billion. England accounted for 17.0 million of these seaside holidays and £3.5 billion of the total spend. In Wales the equivalent figures were 2.8 million seaside holidays and £0.48 billion spend, and in Northern Ireland 0.5 million seaside holidays and £0.072 billion. In Scotland 1.42 million seaside holidays generated £0.28 billion. (Source: UKTS 2007.)
Of the top 10 English towns and cities visited for a holiday trip of one or more nights stay in 2007, four were coastal resorts, including Scarborough, Skegness and Bournemouth. Blackpool, the biggest and most popular resort town, came second only to London, with 1.5 million overnight holiday trips, beating newly fashionable, big city destinations like Manchester and Birmingham and iconic historical destinations like York. (Source: UKTS 2007)
In addition to these overnight trips there were almost 270 million day visits made to the British coast, generating a further £3.1 billion spend. On average, each trip was of 3.9 hours with an average party size of 3.5 people. However, almost 1 in 4 (24%) of all seaside trips were made by people travelling by themselves. Of all these almost 270m seaside day trips, 200m seaside day trips were taken in England, generating a spend of £2.5 billion. There were 25m seaside day trips taken in Wales with a spend of £0.2 billion and 42m seaside day trips in Scotland, generating £0.3 billion.
(Source: UK Day Visits Survey 2002-03, the latest available day trip data).
Other interesting facts relating to the coastal sector are:
Britain is made up of 6,100 islands, of which 291 are inhabited. England and Wales, including their islands, have a coastline of 3240 miles (5214km). Scotland and its islands have a coastline of 5800 miles (9335km). Great Britain has a coastline of 9040 miles (14,549km). There are 5 coastal National Parks and 26 coastal Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. England and Wales have 45 Heritage Coasts measuring 950 miles (1,520km) – Scotland has no Heritage Coasts. The National Trust owns 555 miles (888 km) of coastline in Britain and 74% of their coastline is designated Heritage Coast.
The adult resident population of the 43 principal seaside resort towns in England, Scotland and Wales totals 3.1 million, marginally more than the total population of Wales (2.9 million). The adult resident population of working age in the same 43 principal resorts was some 366,000 greater in 2001 than it was in the heyday of traditional seaside resort holidays of 1971. Over the same period, the total number of jobs available in these towns had also increased by a massive 320,000.
In June 2008, 135 UK resort beaches were awarded the European Blue Flag. Blue Flags are not available to rural beaches; however, a new award to marinas was introduced in 1998. In 2008 a total of 7 marinas in the UK had the Blue Flag. Details of the 2008/09 awards can be accessed at www.blueflag.org. Seaside Awards continue to be awarded in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, while in Wales and Ireland there is also a Green Coast Award www.keepwalestidy.org. A new Quality Coast Award replaced the resort and rural Seaside Award in England during 2007. Information on this new award for English beaches can be accessed at www.qualitycoast.org.
Facts and figures on other key market segments, including rural tourism, market towns, major pay for entry and free entry attractions and city-based tourism, are available via www.tourismtrade.org.uk.