With the summer holidays here it’s interesting to note that last year less people travelled abroad for their holidays, ten million Brits in fact, with many choosing to stay closer to home for holiday, starting a trend known as the ‘staycation’. Many families chose to stay here in the UK in holiday cottages, B&B’s and small country hotels and enjoy the local area because of the drop in the value of the pound against the euro and the dollar, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Figures show that the popular holiday destinations such as , Spain, fell by 2.2million to about 11.5million last year, with France seeing its visitor numbers down 1.1million visitors to 9.8million as well as Portugal, down 720,000 to 1.8million. It’s not just European holiday destination suffering wither the number of people taking trips to the US slumped by 20 per cent, with only 3.2million, however the biggest drop was see in Mexico with 41 per cent drop in visitors after it was identified as the source of the global swine flu epidemic.
According to the 2009 Travel Trends study for the ONS, those who did go overseas found prices for meals, car hire and suntan lotion so high that they reduced their spending, with Spending overseas by families and businessmen fell by £5.1billion to £31.7billion.
However it’s not just the drop in the number of Brits abroad, the number of foreign tourists to Britain fell by 2million last year to 29.9 million. But with more people choosing to stay here in the UK tourism should pick up in resorts that have suffered in the past, with great prices for holiday rentals here in the UK at many popular destinations there’s no excuse not to have a holiday.
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