If you work in tourism in the UK, how’s business?

[BoomTish]

I’m not British so I have no skin in the Brexit game. I am, however, European and, for the past six years, have holidayed in the UK for three weeks every summer.
The reason we go to the UK is that we don’t want hot weather, we’ve developed a bit of an affinity for the area we visit, and we love how dog-friendly the area is. My dog has a pet passport that we can use across Europe.
We travel quite a bit, so a sedate three weeks in England works beautifully for us.

Typically, we rent a house for three weeks in Cornwall at a cost of about £4,500. I’d estimate that we spend another £2,000 on visiting attractions, eating out, petrol, shopping etc. The usual stuff. We stay near a small village and there’s a bigger town nearby so the money we spend stays fairly local.

By this time of the year, I’d normally have booked accommodation and have paid a deposit.

This year, we haven’t booked anything in the UK yet and are unlikely to. I’m going to start looking at alternative destinations in the coming weeks.

The reasons are that nobody has been able to give me an answer about what will happen with the pet passport process in the case of a no deal. My fear is that my dog will have to be quarantined leaving Britain. She’s elderly and I don’t think she’d survive quarantine.
I get that the risk of this happening is minimal, but I just wouldn’t be able to relax knowing that she might not be able to travel freely.

Additionally, the uncertainty spooks me. While I don’t think there’ll be rioting on the streets at the start of April, I just couldn’t be bothered commuting to a holiday in a country with that level of uncertainty.

I don’t have any fears about racial abuse, but I do feel a little unwanted. Funnily enough, I was in Cornwall when the referendum took place, and got a few comments that were a bit close to the bone from pro-Brexit people.

Anyway, the reason I’m asking is that today I received a call from the agency we normally book the holiday home through. They asked if I was intending on booking this year and I said I don’t know yet. We had a chat and it looks like they have a lot fewer bookings that normal for the rest of the year. I was a bit surprised to hear this as I had thought that plenty of Brits would holiday at home if they were experiencing uncertainty about traveling. Holiday company guy said they haven’t seen an increase in domestic bookings, but a definite decrease in visiting Europeans. Obviously, it’s only March so still plenty of time.

So, finally, to my question. If you’re in the holiday trade and usually have a lot of European customers, have you noticed any decrease in bookings? Or have domestic bookings increased to cancel that out?

You can't put your life on hold for something that may not happen!

Brexit could be revoked, there could be a WA or a no-deal with some mini deals, as the EU has already done on flights and transport.

Self booked holidays can be quite cheap to cancel, 1/2 my euros already bought in case there is a collapse in sterling

Aside, anyone who comes to Cornwall in July August is mental, people are jammed in like sardines, the roads are heavily congested, weather is usually shite and its also very expensive.....Europe offers better food & weather, more space and far better vfm.

No, i don't work for Visit England

We are holidaying in Dorset this year (normally go to Greece).

Surprised if uk bookings are down. We’ve booked several separate weeks in the uk and one particular city was really hard to book because of availability. I think people are staying at home this year.

Jas some of us have no other choice but to visit in August, I am looking forward to the days when I can visit in May or September

I am good at reversing my car though

BoomTish 'given that 56% of Cornwall voted 'Leave', I assume they took their reliance on tourism into account'..... oh, that's very naughty of you 😂😂😂

We have gone to Spain to a villa every year for 8 years. We're not going this year, and we're not booking in the UK because we might need that money for more important things.

Also, if sterling collapses, I think after the initial furore, Britain will be rammed with last- minute foreign bookings making the most of it.

we travel a lot and would normally have a holiday booked in the EU for later in the year. This year we may not visit the EU at all but we will make more trips in Britain. We wont be visiting Cornwall in August but we might go at another time of year.

I would expect the declining value of the pound to mean more people visiting Britain.

If food importing becomes more difficult Cornish farmers and fishermen will probably see increased business. I expect they took that into account.

Most Cornish farmers grow caravan parks and EU subsidies; whereas the fishing fleet is a couple of row boats out of Newlyn

Some people are ill informed

www.cornwallgoodseafoodguide.org.uk/cornish-fishing/the-cornish-fishing-industry-today.php

and from a report on the agriculture sector

Agriculture is responsible for about three times as much employment in Cornwall as it is generally in Great Britain
(this relates to the percentage of total employment) .

• Over one third of Cornwall’s manufacturing employment is in food and drink processing compared to only 15% in Great Britain’s manufacturing as a whole.

• Cornwall’s is particularly well represented (in employment terms) in the processing and preserving of meat and production of meat products and the manufacture of bakery and flour based products and to a lesser extent in the manufacture of dairy products.

fishing, forestry & Agri account for (in total) 5% of cornwall's economy and employ 12k out of a workforce around 250k.

So it's more than 2 boats out of Newlyn but not a massive industry.

Again a lack of understanding of the Cornish economy. The agriculture and fishing industry also provide jobs in food processing. The jobs are year round instead of the seasonal and poorly paid jobs in the tourism industry. The contribution to the Cornish economy is about the same as the tourism industry. Since most tourism to Cornwall is not from the EU and some of those employed in the Cornish tourist industry are from the EU Cornish voters were probably more concerned about agriculture and fishing than they were about EU tourism.

More British people travel to the EU than EU visitors coming here. So if tourism stops it would be the EU (especially France, Spain, Italy and Greece) that have most to lose.

Hi OP, I’m not in the trade but we do tend to holiday in the uk and are English...we used to anyway. We looked at a week in the UK this year and I was so annoyed because the prices were pretty ridiculous compared with going abroad still. Honestly, renting a basic room here for hundreds of pounds doesn’t appeal to me. Nor does driving 8hours to cheaper areas with a 3yr old.
Regardless of Brexit fears (and I have many), we have booked to go to France in the summer. It has been a calculated risk but one we decided was worth it. I suspect (hope) flights will have settled by the time we go.

Also I think we have felt pretty rebellious to be honest. We didn’t vote for bloody Brexit and have enough wiggle room with money. So we are bloody well booking our holiday regardless of consequences. I would be more upset if it’s all ok and I didn’t book one than if we booked it and had to cancel. Plenty of rooms you can book without getting fees for cancelling. We just made sure as much as we could had free cancellation and the flights weren’t much.

Poland can get very hot in the summer OP. Norway should be nice and cool.