CD-Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month Skegness is making waves, but could the era of the stay-cation be over?

‘Sharecations’ leap in popularity

The CD-Traveller team share their top 2011 travel experiences and look at the top spots for 2012

A recent report revealed that Brits are pessimistic about 2012 travel. However it might be more accurate to say that Brits have been put off holidaying abroad, for domestic tourism seems to be soaring – according to figures released by VisitEngland at the annual ABTA Travel Convention in Palma, Majorca.

ll sorts of reports have been published lately telling us where we are going. Now comes one that says a third of us who plan to take a holiday this year haven’t booked yet. And of those of us who are going take a holiday, 35% are going to stay in the UK.
So are you holidaying in the UK this year? And if so, where?

Most of you will have heard that Pontins has gone into administration. This means that a firm of accountants have been called in to try and rescue the company and sell off whatever assets they have.
This raises two questions. Why, when staycations have been so popular did Pontins not do better than it seems to have been doing and what happens to the holidaymaker who has booked a future holiday when a domestic holiday provider goes bust.

There has been a flurry of information released that supposedly tells us what we did during the summer. Did we holiday at home or did we go abroad and does it matter to us as the people who went anyway. The only reason we are interested in this sort of news is because of that self-satisfying feel you get in knowing whether you have done something different or whether you have been where others have gone.

It’s official. Today, staycation has been accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary so they must think that the word, if not the holiday idea is here to stay. Unlike some tour operators who have blamed reduced profits this year on weather, volcanic ash, strikes and the economy for the fact that Britons and Irish are not going abroad. So is the staycation just a passing fad?
The head of Wyndham’s In Europe, thinks not.

Both TUI (the parent company of Thomson, First Choice and Crystal) and Thomas Cook announced results this week. Each seems to have been hit by people booking later and by people holidaying at home. Eurodisney also announced that they had been helped by more French people visiting their resort outside Paris so it seems as though the staycation, whether you are in France or the UK, is having an impact on tourism and travel. And now we have David Cameron making a speech on tourism and urging us to holiday at home (More on this over the weekend, when I have properly read it. I can’t remember a Prime Minister making a speech on tourism before.)

I was quite surprised to find yesterday that the first local school had just broken up for Easter. In my mind it was still weeks away but in fact Good Friday is only 2 weeks tomorrow.
After the winter we have had it wouldn’t surprise any of us if bookings to the Spanish resorts and warmer areas was the main appeal but personal finances being what they are, some of us will think of taking no breaks at all. And for those that do go, there could be quite a few handicaps to going away. First there are the railways. The RMT union is considering scheduling a nationwide strike because of what it says are safety issues that may occur when Network Rail lays off staff. . You probably need to be an expert to know if safety was an issue. Needless to say, Network Rail says there is no problem and you have to wonder whether if safety was the issue, the union wouldn’t have called the strike as soon as it legally could. By striking at Easter, the cynical amongst us begin to wonder.

One of the successes of 2009 has been the growth of the staycation. More of us took a domestic holiday than for many years. Was it going to be a one day wonder or was it something that would last into, at least, another year?
Depending on who you talk to you it’s either holding up well for this year or it was just a feature of the recession last year. Both Haven and Hoseasons have said that bookings are up for domestic holidays this year. On the other hand, Hotels.com and www.simonseeks.com, that the staycation is well and truly over and will be replaced by overseas holidays in 2010.
Who is right?

Just before Christmas, we mentioned a few ideas that some of the experts thought would flourish in 2010. Today we have the thoughts of another four groups on what they think, ABTA, IPK, STA Travel and the Intercontinental Hotels chain. You might remember that Mintel thought it would be another year of the staycation with days out and weekend breaks becoming more prominent. And Euromonitor forecast the rise of pop up hotels which could be assembled (and taken down) quickly and which would offer inexpensive accommodation.
ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) says that Sri Lanka, Mexico and Thailand will see more tourists from the UK than they had in 2009.

This is the time of year when forecasters gaze into the tealeaves and predict what might happen in the coming year. Some may even get it right but by the time we can prove it one way or the other, it will become time for the next bunch of forecasts.

Mintel, a research company that forecasts across many different industries, says that there will be seven trends in our behaviour during 2010 as we begin to fell more confident than we did this year.

Firstly they think we will be more resilient in that we will be able to recover

In the travel industry there are only two seasons, summer and winter. Summer ends at the end of October. No figures have come out yet showing what we did this summer but there are some hints.

We didn’t go abroad as much as we did the year before. Maybe the numbers dropped by between 15 and 20%. Europe and North America would have been the worst hit since their currencies were strong and there was less discounting on hotel prices. Unlike Turkey where flexibility and keen pricing will have prompted many more of us to go there

It’s that time of the year again when thousands of buildings are let open free of charge for us to wander through them. Some are never open apart from on these days.

Last night the BBC’s Panorama programme looked at the quality of our water at beaches. At the beginning of the programme in tabloid scarey style it pointed out that 43% of beaches provided a chance of us catching gastro-enteritis.

Just capital
London comes alive in the summer; there is so much to see and do. However if you’re lacking the imagination to find something to keep you entertained, fret no longer. The CD Traveller team has come up with some suggestions to see you through the summer months…
Get into shape
Wheely great
We all love the feel [...]

The common thought is that this summer people are staying at home and, if last week’s weather was anything to go by, with reason. But another week, different weather and you bet some tabloid journalist is already dreaming up a story that says summer is over.So from Travel Navigator, the new monthly survey from Arkenford*, [...]