22 June 2010 : Written by Rhian Evans
According to the Telegraph yesterday the "staycation" is falling out of favour with the British. The evidence comes from a decline in sales of guide books for Britain (statistics from Amazon.co.uk) with only 1 book (a guide for London) about the UK is in the Top 10 Travel Guides for 2010, when in 2009 there were 4.
Other sources are saying that due to the disappointing weather last Summer, people are more reticent about planning their holidays in the UK for fear of a wash-out.
Whilst all of this makes sense, we have our own theories: maybe after the big increase in Britons staying in Britain in 2009, lots of people would have bought guide books about Britain last year, which they didn't have before, and are still using them this year. We appreciate there may not be a growth in "staycationers" but it may not indicate a decline.
The weather on the other hand does probably play a factor and there are statistics, I think from Visit Britain, that people are still making their big holiday arrangements abroad, but having short breaks in Britain as well, many of them camping.
Camping can be a fairweather pursuit for many and so lends itself to being a last-minute weekend away decision based on a 5 day weather forecast.
The biggest barrier to this area of domestic tourism growing is that it is incredibly difficult to find a campsite with availability at short notice. Hotels you have Laterooms; hostels you have Hostelbookers etc. With camping it becomes a pot-luck game of trying to make sneaky phone-calls to 10s of different sites from work; or filling in booking forms and emails and waiting 48 hrs for a reply - not conducive for a fairweather last minute camper.
In our recent research we called a huge cross-section of UK campsites in between 10am and 4pm on weekdays and only 40% actually answered the phone!
However, with the camping industry beginning to be serviced by websites such as campingninja.com where, for the first time, you can actually find the right campsite with availability, then book it all in the same place, it is likely that this could promote an increase in short, last-minute camping trips rather than a decline.
With the camping industry catching up with their technology, the ease of getting away last minute for campers could mean a real boost for domestic tourism.