The Changing Habits of Holidaymakers

May I take this opportunity to wish all our clients, readers and business associates a very happy and prosperous 2010!

There are currently mixed messages reaching members of the local tourism and hospitality industries. While a recent poll of 3,000 consumers by the travel site simonseeks.com found that the UK is still hailed as being the best-value holiday destination, the newly published ITB World Travel Trends Report showed that travel activity declined most in the UK (followed by Russia and Sweden) in the calendar year following the worldwide economic and financial crisis.

It would seem that last-minute bookings are at a record high and, according to Dr. Martin Buck at ITB organiser Messe Berlin, travellers are becoming an “increasingly indeterminable factor for holiday destinations, airlines, hotels, tour operators and travel agencies”. He goes on to say that “together with demographic shifts, changing lifestyles and technological progress, the recession is changing travel behaviour”.

We have certainly been aware of these changes for quite some time and have been able to modify our services accordingly by dropping several poorly performing (and overly expensive) sites last year in favour of better quality outlets - enabling LDS Tourism Services to offer superior display locations at very reasonable rates.

Despite these difficult times, we are doing a great deal to support our clients. As ever, we are able to offer both regional and national distribution; customers can opt to use our popular Network or General Distribution services; they may choose to be included in our high-footfall Exclusive establishments or perhaps decide to pick and choose from all three. In addition, we supply a range of complimentary brochure holders to tourism operators in North Wales, Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, West Lancashire and Shropshire.

If you would like a quotation for leaflet/brochure distribution or social media marketing, simply drop us a line or ring 01244 671859 and we will create a unique and reasonably priced campaign to suit your particular requirements.

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Image: View down onto the beach, Llandudno ©Britainonview

A Happy New Year For UK Tourism?

We were delighted to read that, “demand for UK domestic holidays is up due to the weak pound, according to Hoseasons” (Weak pound boosts domestic market by Bev Fearis); and according to TravelMole: “As the pound continues to struggle against the euro, the self catering operator says its bookings for UK breaks in 2009 are up 20%.”

The Chief Executive of Hoseasons Holidays, Richard Carrick, has revealed that over the last few months they have seen, “an increasing appetite for holidays in Britain, as a strong euro and a desire to manage household budgets has meant that more and more holidaymakers look to stay in the UK in 2009.” He went on to say that Hoseasons were “benefiting from people who know that by taking a self-catering holiday they can manage and control their holiday budgets more tightly."

If Carrick is correct, this could mean that money spent by holidaymakers will help the wider British economy. Consequently, the Government is being encouraged to back UK tourism as the plunging value of the pound makes Britain a more affordable holiday destination for foreign visitors – indeed, the Tourism Alliance has gone so far as to describe the sudden change in the country’s competitive position as something of a “potential silver lining to the cloud of recession” for British businesses. They could well be right as the fall in the value of the pound against the euro and the dollar has created what is widely being hailed as an “unparalleled opportunity” for the UK tourism industry.

Moving on to a completely different topic, we are delighted to reveal that there are now 432 members of our Brochure Marketing group on LinkedIn. If you would like to join, simply follow this link and click the ‘Join Group’ button.

LDS Tourism Services will be closing its offices from 24th December 2008 until 5th January 2009 – although staff will continue to service key display sites throughout the festive season. However, it will still be possible to contact us by leaving messages on this blog.

May we take this opportunity to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Flying High During Hard Times

TravelMole published an interesting article on their website yesterday, entitled “Brits raid piggy bank to pay for holiday”. According to research by Abbey Savings, despite soaring utility bills, ridiculous prices at the pump and mortgage payments going through the roof, millions of Brits are refusing to allow the crunch to “stop them having their two weeks playtime”.

The bank revealed that “almost two thirds of holidaymakers” are “raiding the piggy bank to pay for breaks, spending more than £50 billion”. The bank’s findings “echo a summer of stories from diverse sources suggesting that the annual holiday really is the last thing to be sacrificed in leaner times, despite daily media predictions of a massive recession just around the corner”.

We also spotted an article in RealBusiness (“Bring on the recession! It’s good for business”) in which Moir-Jones, the CEO of London Calling – a marketing agency that specialises in leaflet distribution – told the magazine she was completely unfazed by Britain’s looming recession. “When times are hard, people go back to basics”, she said. “Leaflets are a tried and tested form of marketing. During the last recession the firm did really well. We actually experienced high growth, doubling in size that year.”

This struck a chord with LDSTS Directors, Diana and Paula, who set up the business during the slump of the early 90s. “I think we benefitted from our client’s reduced marketing budgets,” says Di. “Without a doubt, printed literature positioned in the right place to catch the eye of potential visitors has always been one of the most successful and cost effective ways to promote an attraction, region or event. Other advertising methods may bite the dust when we hit a downturn but brochures are indispensible when it comes to any short or long-term marketing campaign.”

We recently received a letter of thanks from The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) for sending them our latest batch of used postage stamps for their Save the Albatross charity appeal, which helps raise valuable funds for the protection of these magnificent birds. They thanked us for donating the stamps and expressed a hope that we would continue to do so – which, of course, we will!

If anyone else would like to do something positive to help protect birds around the world, please send your used postage stamps to:

R.S.P.B.
PO Box 6198
Leighton Buzzard
Bedfordshire
LU7 9XT.