Excerpt from The Guardian
More than 40% of firms say they are likely to go under despite staycation boom
Last year’s boom in British summer holidays was not enough to save thousands of tourism businesses, despite increased domestic bookings to popular places such as Cornwall and the Yorkshire Dales.
A survey by the Tourism Alliance of 1,927 tour operators, hotels, attractions, language schools and other travel and hospitality businesses serving foreign tourists found that 11% believe they are “very likely to fail” in 2022, and a total of 41% think they are “quite likely to fail”.
The first three months of 2022 are looking bleak, with cancellations soaring in the wake of the Omicron variant. Almost a third of businesses surveyed have lost at least half of bookings made for domestic holidays between January and March this year.
With far less government support available after the end of the furlough scheme, a quarter of those surveyed said they had no more cash reserves, and just over half said they would run out within two months.
Last summer saw crowded beaches and sold-out seaside resorts, but that masked an overall drop in domestic tourism away from coastal and rural areas, according to Kurt Janson, director of the Tourism Alliance. The alliance comprises more than 60 trade associations that together represent 303,000 UK travel businesses.
“There’s traditionally been a huge amount of domestic tourism in towns and cities, and a lot of business travel and conferences, and those sectors have done very badly,” Janson said. “Businesses that rely on international travel have done badly – language schools, events, conferences. And because booking times for these things are longer, they will take longer to recover.”
Janson was particularly concerned about tour operators serving foreign visitors. “They are responsible for about 60% of overseas visitors to the UK and if they are not out there promoting the UK as a destination, inbound tourism will take a long time to recover. We need them out there, fighting for our corner of the market.”
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