‘Staycation’ is no joke – and I’ve got the figures to prove it

The other day I read that something in the region of 15% of the new jobs created since the current government took office, have been created in the hospitality sector. That’s more than construction, retail or anywhere else.

But this week’s news – that 5.1 million Britons intend to go on an overnight stay somewhere else in the UK over the August bank holiday – shows that there is a certain level of self-sustenance in the hospitality economy. We’re not relying solely on huge influxes of people from overseas to make the high season pay well.

The attendant statistics for this story included monetary ones: that overnight holiday trip that will no doubt jam the M4 for a couple of days is going to inject around £1.2bn of tourism spend into the UK economy, £940m of which will be spent in England alone. Millions more people are considering going on a day trip, which will no doubt add tens more millions to the total spend.

It’s probably fair to say that this most recent recession has had its tendrils so deeply ensconced in all sectors for so long, that the Great British Public is by now used to the notion of not blowing thousands on a trip abroad: perhaps we can even expect the ‘staycation’ trend to continue once the economy is well and truly booming again.

There is of course one dampener, and that is the weather. As I write, forecasters are rather glibly informing me that a low pressure system is going to bring torrents of rain over the first extended weekend we’ve had in months. Here’s hoping your hotel guests all take the opportunity to chill in the bar and spa.