Although now around two million trips below the ‘staycation’ peak of 2009, domestic tourism remains well ahead of its pre-recessionary levels. However, as the UK economy enters recovery the domestic market faces the prospect of renewed competition from holidays abroad.
A key strength and selling-point of domestic tourism is that, although it cannot compete with overseas destinations as regards to weather, it offers a greater range of holidays than the overseas market which tends to be dominated by ‘fly and flop’ beach breaks, and is ideally placed to meet the demands of a growing number of consumers for a regular varied diet of short leisure breaks.
This report analyses market trends, looks at leading operators and tourist board activity and includes consumer analysis including levels of domestic holiday taking and frequency of short breaks and longer holidays, regions visited, domestic tourism activities and future intentions to take holidays within the UK. Mintel last reported on this market in Domestic Tourism – UK, September 2013.
Definition
This report examines holidays taken in the UK by its residents. These must constitute a stay of at least one night and do not include business trips, visits to stay with friends and relatives or stays solely for events such as weddings or funerals.
Data on the size and segmentation of the market are for Great Britain rather than the United Kingdom (ie Northern Ireland is not included).
An adult, for the purposes of Mintel’s research, is anyone aged 16-years-old or over.
The standard travel and tourism definitions used in the terminology of this report are as follows:
Tourism is any travel, which involves an overnight stay away from home.
A holiday is a subjectively defined form of tourism, as defined by the tourist in response to surveys such as the ips. A holiday can be distinguished from other leisure travel such as visits to friends and relatives (vfr) or shopping trips.
A long holiday is a holiday of four nights or more away from home; a short break is a holiday that involves one to three nights away from home.
Short-haul refers to air holidays within Europe, dominated by flights to Mediterranean resorts but including the Canaries, which are treated as a part of the Spanish market. Long-haul, therefore, refers to holidays outside Europe.
An inclusive tour, or package holiday, is defined as the simultaneous sale of at least two elements of a holiday to the traveller: fares on public transport (eg flights) and commercial accommodation (eg hotel or self-catering apartment). Other elements, such as meals or excursions, are not essential to the definition of an inclusive tour. The term ‘all-inclusive’ is used to describe a special type of resort holiday in which food, drink, excursions and other services are provided as part of the total holiday cost.
An independent holiday is one in which the traveller organises and books transport and accommodation from separate sources (eg a channel ferry crossing and a caravan site in France).
Seat- or flight-only is a type of independent holiday, and the terms are used to denote holidays in which travellers only purchase a return fare and thereafter book their own accommodation, car hire etc.
In addition to quantitative consumer research, Mintel also conducted an online discussion group among a demographically mixed group of around 15 consumers.
This discussion group was asynchronous (ie not run in real time), functioning like a blog or bulletin board, with questions remaining posted for a pre-determined period of time. This method allows participants to respond reflectively, at their leisure, or to log off to think about any issues raised and return later to respond. Participants were recruited from GMI’s online consumer panel.
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