Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
years to provide their customers with an enhanced
range of facilities, including swimming pools, fi tness
suites, entertainment and restaurant facilities, aimed
principally at the family and youth market. Touring
caravans are particularly popular with older age groups,
many of whom are members of the Caravan Club or
the Caravan and Camping Club of Great Britain.
•
Sea
- ferries, cruise ships, barges, yachts;
•
Air
- scheduled services, charter fl ights, 'no frills'
carriers, air taxis.
Travel by private car is the most popular mode of
transport used for tourist trips in the UK, as Figure 1.6
demonstrates.
FOCUS ON INDUSTRY
Type of transport
% of trips
HOSEASONS HOLIDAYS
Car
79
Hoseasons Holidays is a long established self-
catering company, specialising in holiday parks,
lodges, country cottages and boating in Britain,
plus holiday parks and apartments in Europe. The
company also offers boating holidays in France
and Belgium. It is the leading independent holiday
booking service in the UK, arranging holidays for more
than 1 million customers every year. Over one-third
of the company's business comes from people who
have been with Hoseasons before and a further one-
third comes from friends and relatives of those who
have booked previously. Hoseasons employs more
than 200 staff to handle its reservations, systems
and marketing, dealing with 2 million telephone calls
and website hits each year. It has recently invested
heavily in its online booking facility.
Train
11
Bus/Coach
3
Organised Coach
3
Plane
4
Fig 1.6 - Types of transport used by UK
people for tourist trips in 2005
Figure 1.6 shows that nearly 80 per cent of all tourist
trips are made by car, with just 11 per cent by train and
6 per cent by coach travel of various types. Although
travel by plane in the UK accounts for just 4 per cent,
this is the fastest-growing transport sector, with low-
cost airlines in particular offering new routes to more
regional airports in the UK.
Weblink
Check out this website for more
information on Hoseasons.
www.hoseasons.co.uk
The following sections of this unit look in detail at each
of the four main types of transport, starting with road
travel.
Transport provision
Road travel
We saw in the previous section of this unit that travel by
car is by far the most popular type of transport used by
tourists in Britain. Increasing car ownership and access
to private transport has meant that the use of cars for
tourist trips has grown dramatically over the last 50
years at the expense of rail and coach/bus travel, both
of which have experienced steady losses in market
share.
Having good transport networks is essential for a
successful travel and tourism sector, whether people
are on business, travelling for leisure or visiting friends
and relatives. Transport for tourism can be divided
into road, rail, sea and air. The most common types of
transport in each of these categories are:
•
Road
- private car, coach, taxi, bus, bicycle;
•
Rail
- regional services, inter-city routes, high-speed
services, steam trains;
