Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of England, to accommodate the growing number of families looking for
an escape from daily routine. The holidays, initially advertised in the Daily
Express newspaper, were priced between 35 shillings (£1.75) and £3 per
week. By 1939 (at the start of the Second World War) 11 million people
in the UK were able to take holidays with pay, and Butlin had opened
another camp, at Clacton in Essex; the two camps combined attracted
almost 100,000 visitors (Page, 2009). The type of holidays offered by early
entrepreneurs such as Butlin, and later Fred Pontin, enabled families to seek
a brief respite from historically dark and depressing times. For the families
not previously in a position to afford such luxuries as holidays, the camps
offered a welcome break.
As access to land-based transportation increased, so the coast and
countryside became more accessible to the masses, thus increasing the types
of holiday available to families. With the advent of affordable commercial
aviation came greater opportunities for family holidays outside the UK.
Vladimir Raitz organised the first package tour by air to Corsica in 1949 and
key developments in air transportation quickly followed with the entry into
commercial service of the Boeing 707 in the late 1950s and Boeings 727 and
747 in the 1960s. Capable of seating almost 500 passengers, the Boeing 747,
or jumbo jet, has since been instrumental in transporting millions of people
worldwide. In 2009, of the 58.6 million visits abroad by UK residents, 46.7
million were made by air (ONS, 2010c).
The package holiday market grew considerably in the 1970s, with
Spain quickly becoming the preferred destination for UK travellers, thanks
to cheap transportation and a proliferation of affordable accommodation
complexes and support services to cater for inbound tourism. Indeed, Spain
remains the most popular destination for UK tourists (ONS, 2010c), with
11.6 million visits by UK travellers in 2009.
According to Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), those people
most likely to have young families (i.e. those aged 35-44) are the age group
most likely to take a UK domestic holiday (ABTA, 2011). In the current
economic climate and with rising costs of foreign exchange within the
eurozone in particular, the 'staycation' phenomenon appears to have become
more firmly embedded in UK travel culture. The number of visits abroad in
2009 was the lowest since 2001 (ONS, 2010c) and '2009 was an exceptional
year for domestic tourism' (VisitEngland, 2010: 1). According to VisitEngland
(2010), the volume of domestic overnight trips in the UK, however, declined
across all categories, such as visiting friends and relatives (VFR), business
and leisure. There were also differences across socio-economic grades, 'with
the number of trips taken by the more affluent AB demographic group
unchanged compared with 2009 levels while trips taken by the least affluent
DE social grade were down by 15 per cent' (VisitEngland, 2010: 1). Impor-
tantly, 'households with children maintained trip levels, whereas 7 per cent
fewer trips were made by households without children'.
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