The accommodation boom is now completely over. Research published this month by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows Britons holidaying abroad increased from 45.6 million in 2022 to 55.5 million last year. Additionally, a recent VisitBritain trends survey found that despite the ongoing cost of living crisis – 60 per cent of respondents plan to travel abroad in 2024, up from 57 per cent last year.
While we have embraced domestic travel over the last few years (especially since for most of that time international travel was bogged down in red tape or banned outright), we are once again foraying into foreign shores.
So who can blame us? Leaving the weather issue aside for now, it’s hard not to conclude that UK holidays are not good value for money; This is a major concern amid rising mortgage rates, food costs, and utility bills.
Imagine you are looking for a summer vacation for your family. You want to spend days on the beach, take coastal walks, and enjoy delicious meals outside, but you are worried about prices. So you might assume the solution is to stay in Britain. Visiting Cornwall, not Corfu; The Lake District instead of Tuscany. You’re wrong.
Accomodation
This August I tried looking for a two-bedroom holiday home in Cornwall. The cheapest hit for a week from 5 August on leading site holidaycottages.co.uk is currently £890, and that’s for a decidedly unattractive flat. You could easily spend more than double that for some of the fancier two-bedroom venues, and for a party of eight you’re looking at over £3,000 for something stylish.
Yes, it is possible to have a cheaper holiday in England. You can camp, stay in a caravan or head to the less-traveled coastline in northern England. But compare the prices above with what you’ll find on the Continent. A similar search for the same dates on the Gites de France website (gites-de-france.com/en) reveals options from £350 in Brittany and £300 in Provence. For the same price as that Cornish flat, you can stay at Venelle de la Croix, a characterful self-catering property on the trendy Île de Ré, available through Sawday’s (sawdays.co.uk).
Airbnb was once hailed as a cost-cutting alternative to traditional self-catering properties, but prices, as well as booking and cleaning fees, have risen in recent years. The average nightly price of a rental in the UK in 2024 has risen by 12 per cent since 2023 to £153, according to analytics firm AirDNA. Average prices in France, Italy and Spain are £107, £124 and £121 respectively.
Again, for 5-12 August, I looked on Airbnb for a two-bedroom property in popular Southwold: the cheapest option, a lovely cottage, priced at £1,548. But if you opt for the equally cool Peñíscola in eastern Spain, you’ll find a good apartment for half that price.
Of course, you’ll also need to factor in the cost of getting there. But despite the rise in airfares, in peak season you can still find flights to Europe for around £50 one way, or a Eurotunnel return for around £200.
“We holidayed in East Wittering right after Covid and it was so bad we will never do it again,” says Suzi Love, a mother of two who lives in Winchester. “The house we booked was priced at £1,800 from Monday to Friday, it was tired and mediocre at best, there wasn’t a huge choice of places to eat out and the high prices were not reflected in the quality of food or service. “In addition, the weather was dangerous.”
Ah yes, the weather. Even if British holidays can compete on price, it’s hard to miss the fact that Cornwall gets around 187 hours of sunshine and 73mm of rainfall each August, while Andalusia gets around 300 hours and 1mm of rainfall.
“My girls are three and six, so they just need the beach or the pool, but when the weather’s not nice you really have to keep them entertained and that’s not a holiday for us adults,” Love adds. “Red roads and sewage-polluted beaches are quite unattractive, so we’d rather hop on a plane and reach the south of Spain in three hours, where the weather is more assured.”
eating out
The ONS says Spain tops the leaderboard when it comes to Britons’ favorite destinations, with 21 per cent of all overseas visits in 2023 to the sangria country, followed by France (11 per cent), Italy (6 per cent) and Greece He says he did. (5 percent). And when you look at the cost of eating and drinking in these countries, you don’t have to think hard to understand why.
Each year, the Post Office compares food and drink prices at dozens of popular destinations with other typical holiday purchases. Buying a coffee in the Algarve is estimated to set you back 88p, while on the Costa del Sol the average price is £1.58. For a three-course meal for two, including a bottle of wine, you can expect to pay £40 or £60 respectively in the two sunny locations. Compare this to the UK, where the price of a coffee ranges from £3 to £4 and the average three-course meal for two (including wine) is closer to £70 or £80.
Moreover, while food and drink prices are still on the rise in the UK (seen a 7 per cent increase by January 2024), it is a different picture abroad. The 2024 Post Office Holiday Money Report found that prices for food, drink and other goods have fallen since last year in 25 of the 40 destinations surveyed.
To wander
The high cost of rail travel in the UK is another thorny issue. Let’s say you want to get to your Cornish holiday flat by train, take a page out of Greta Thunberg’s book and do your bit for the planet. The cheapest return from London to Penzance on 5 August is currently £143 (that’s almost £600 for a family of four) and the journey takes just under five hours. If you’re traveling from Manchester the bill is £236 per person and the journey takes over seven hours. And that’s before you add the round-trip taxi fare to your accommodation. For comparison, a quick three-hour return trip from Madrid to Malaga on the same date costs £55 per person.
The alternative, and the choice of most holidaymakers in the UK, is to drive. No one who has taken the A303 on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday will want to repeat the experience, but loading a family car with four people and driving from London to Cornwall is significantly cheaper than the train (around £60 one way). trip). I’m sorry Greta.
Underline
Add in the cost of transport to your destination, accommodation and eating out and you’re looking at a family of four looking at more than £2,000 (probably closer to £3,000) for a UK holiday. So it’s no wonder tip-and-flop packages look so appealing. Go Tui and £2,000 will get you a week’s bed and breakfast accommodation (including flights) at the Green Forest Hotel in Dalaman, Turkey (from 8 August); £3,000 will secure a week-long all-inclusive holiday at the Invisa Figueral Resort in Ibiza (from 7 August).
UK holiday providers recognize that the glory days of Covid are over and are looking for ways to improve their offerings. Last month Telegraph Travel reported how British holidaymakers were upping their survival game with the addition of everything from jacuzzis to axe-throwing. Prices have also been cut.
James Norton, manager of independent holiday business Toad Hall Cottages, confirms the market went “crazy” during the pandemic years, but says prices are now back to where they should be.
“Dynamic pricing, determined by automated algorithms, adjusts the price based on demand (how many visits a page gets, etc.),” he says. “Currently, some sites offer a 50 percent discount, but this is a bit misleading. Prices are correcting after a bloated few years, with some properties renting for £1,200 pre-Covid [per week] It commanded rates of £3,000 or £4,000.
One way Toad Hall is improving its offering is by moving transit days to Wednesdays, Thursdays and Mondays instead of Saturdays and Sundays, “so people only spend five hours on the A303 instead of eight,” says Norton. He adds: “Some owners have wanted to cut prices by 10 per cent to secure bookings, although there are exceptions. The New Forest is doing incredibly well this year with record bookings, and the best properties in places like Salcombe are being booked all summer long.”
Even discounts won’t persuade most of us to stay in the UK this summer. VisitBritain research has pointed to holidaymakers’ desire to experience new cultures, and that’s exactly why Anna and Jon Long are taking their teenagers Ella, 17, and Ollie, 15, abroad.
“We didn’t make detailed or broad comparisons this summer because we stopped looking. Holidaying in the UK is for the very organised; Anything nice during the school holidays gets very busy and gets booked up well in advance,” says Anna. “Young people are being much more discerning about their holidays and would rather be at home with their friends than be stuck in a cottage in Devon in the pouring rain.
“When the cost of a holiday in the UK is this marginal, we think there aren’t too many holidays left to spend with kids, so it’s nice to do something a little special with them. “I know we are lucky to be in a position to do this, but we love exploring new places as a family while we still can.”