What Ever Happened to the Great British Holiday?

Walkers Crisps recently started a promotion on their crisp packets called Walkers Brit Trips, you simply collect "e-points" from packets by entering the individual code online. The range of trips is extensive with entry to theme parks, 2 for 1 on many adventure pursuits and discounts on short breaks.

The main reason I was encouraged by this promotion was that, more often than not we holiday in foreign countries, and failing to even consider UK locations as an acceptable getaway spot. I too am guilty of this, failing to have even seen some of the local tourist hubs in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. In actual fact I have been to London airports many more times than being in London.

So what happened to the great British holiday?

From the most recent UK Tourism Survey figures, we did take 79.2 million domestic holidays in the UK in 2006, spending £13.6 billion. 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.

UK Top Ten Cities for Domestic Trips;

1. London
2. Manchester
3. Birmingham
4. Bristol
5. Blackpool
6. Leeds
7. Scarborough
8. Newcastle
9. Liverpool
10. York

In 2005, the UKTS found that we took 86.6m domestic holidays. These figures have been continually decreasing year-on-year. Changes in UKTS methodology make direct comparisons with the figures for previous years difficult.

UK Top Ten Cities for Business Trips;

1. London
2. Birmingham
3. Manchester
4. Leeds
5. Bristol
6. Nottingham
7. Liverpool
8. Newcastle
9. York
10. Hull

The growth of low-cost airlines have somewhat contributed to the demise of the domestic holiday, as more often than not, an airline ticket to Paris is cheaper than a rail ticket to London from Birmingham. Cost is an imminent factor and overall you can travel to pretty much anywhere in Europe for the same price (or even sometimes less) as travelling within the UK. Obviously this price differeniation does little to promote UK interests.

This means that we are travelling further by air, year on year, we don't need to even see the figures, just the constant news that UK airports are planning expansions, with additional terminals and runways to meet current existing and future demand.

Holidaying is a bit of an exact science, as to which is more environmentally sound way to travel. For example, London to Paris with EasyJet emits 56kg of CO2, not including additional travel to and from the airports. Eurostar emits only 5.5kg of CO2 per person. The driving distance, is about 289 miles, including using the train to cross the channel, depending on your car and the number of passengers, you could be looking at anything from 51kg of CO2 for the smallest car with one passenger, to 210kg for the most inefficient car. With more passengers this will obviously decrease. But if you were to drive to Brighton alone, you would emit more emissions than travelling to Paris by eurostar.

Green journeys not only matter to and from the local supermarket, but when we travel to the other side of the globe, but not only is travelling green difficult to calculate its nightmare over huge distances, with connections and stop overs, and in today's society time is a highly important factor in transport costs, especially for business, and individuals with limited holiday time.

Green travel is tough but if you can do it I applaude you, I am thinking of my next planned trip, Belfast > Bristol > London > Paris, in less than five days, and of course back again. With such little time I may have to hypocritically fly part of the journey.

If you want information on how to travel anywhere by train, check out the Man in Seat Sixty One, the link is in our blogroll.