This section outlines the visitor market in the UK, referring to employment, trends and the structure of the industry before making special reference to the industry in rural areas.
TOURISM IN THE UK
In common with other developed countries, Britain is both a major generator and destination for international tourism, and this and domestic tourism generates substantial revenues for the national economy. The UK is the fourth largest generator of tourists in the world, having been ousted from third place in the 1980s by Japan. Inbound tourism expanded during the 1980s, rising by 50% from 12 to 18 million trips in 1990 (WTO 1991). In 1990, overseas visitors spent £7,785 million in the UK, and contributed a further £1,950 million to the economy through fares paid to the UK carriers, accounting for nearly 40% of the value of tourism to the country (BTA 1992). Overall, the tourism industry contributed 3.7% of the GDP in 1990 and supports 1.5 million jobs directly and indirectly (BTA 1992). A recent report considers that the national economy could be at risk if the tourism industry declines (National Economic Development Council 1992).
Trips and Expenditure
Domestic tourism has declined slightly in recent years, against a background of long-term growth - staying tourists made 95 million trips in 1990, a drop of 13% from 1989, and expenditure declined to £10,500 million, a 4% reduction before taking inflation into account (BTA 1992). Levels of expenditure indicate the importance of different types of tourism to the industry -see Table 1. The figures illustrate the critical importance of the domestic holiday market, and the value of the overall market that local visitor industries could seek to gain a share of.
Table 1 - UK residents' expenditure in the UK 1990: by purpose £million % Holidays 7300 70 VFR 900 9 Business 1600 15 Miscellaneous 600 5 TOTAL 10 400 100
Source: British National Travel Survey 1991
Pattern of Domestic Holidaymaking
The pattern of domestic tourism has been changing. The number of long holidays taken has remained relatively stable at about 32 million since 1982, and in 1990 38% of British adults took at least one long holiday (four or more nights) in Britain (BNTS 1991). However, while the total number of holiday trips taken in Britain by domestic tourists has not altered significantly over the last decade, the average length of each is becoming shorter (Mintel 1990). Within this pattern, the second holiday market has become very important to the industry, accounting for 48% of all holiday trips made. This market has doubled in value since 1976, and is now second only to business tourism in terms of hotel revenue (Mintel 1990). The effect has been:
"... to produce a structural change in the nature of the British domestic holiday industry which has profound implications"
Middleton 1986
This trend has significant implications for less-visited areas, many of which have relatively few attractions. Such areas could conceivably aim to sustain the interest of visitors for short stays, but promoting long holidays there would perhaps be inappropriate at present; thus the trend may work in favour of non-traditional visitor destinations, including many rural areas.
DAY TRIPS
The first authoritative estimate of the scale of day tripping from home at a national level have been provided by the UK Leisure Day Trips Survey 1988-89. The sheer scale of day tripping is illustrated by the total of 360 million day trips between April 1988 and March 1989 (Leisure Day Visits Survey 1988/89). Expenditure associated with these trips was £5.2 billion in that year.
Outdoor activities were the most popular reason for making trips, and rural areas are well-placed to capitalise upon this market. The size of the market is shown at Table 2:
Table 2 - British day visits by purpose
Trips (million) % Outdoor activities 174 28 VFR 144 23 Visits to attractions 82 13 Shopping trips (non-routine) 64 10
Pubs & restaurants 45 7
Parties & dances 40 6
Indoor sport 36 6
Theatre & bingo 15 2
TOTAL 630 100
EMPLOYMENT
The visitor industry is a useful means of job provision in the UK. Employment in tourism related industries expanded during the 1980s, and is predicted to continue to grow throughout the current decade. Department of Employment figures show that there were an estimated 1.5 million employees serving overseas and domestic tourists in June 1990 (in jobs directly and indirectly supported by the industry) and a further 200,000 self employed people were also involved (Baty and Templeton 1990). The proportion of UK employment accounted for by the industry rose from 3.3% to 6.6% during the eighties, an increase of 26.1% in the workforce during a decade when all employment in service industries grew by 15.8% against a slight decline in the entire UK workforce (Baty and Templeton 1991).
Many more jobs are indirectly supported by tourism than these figures suggest. Department of Employment statistics include employees in hotels, restaurants, pubs and cafes, sport and recreation and tourist attractions, but people in transport and retailing cannot be identified from the available survey data. Jobs indirectly supported by tourism spending, such as those in industries, manufacturing food and drink for tourists, are also excluded (Baty and Templeton 1991). Overall, the visitor industry employs more than the health services; the construction industry; and about six times more than the motor vehicle industry (Employment Department
TOURISM TRENDS
The economy has been suffering from a severe recession. Predictions in the English Tourist Board’s Investment in Tourism publication (ETB 1992a) concurred with many others - that recovery will start in 1993, and the Board consider that the hard-pressed hotel and catering industry will return to profitability from then.
The recreation and tourism industry is frequently described as a safe long-term bet (see for instance English Tourist Board 1991), but the domestic market is changing and plans for future development must acknowledge this. Many predictions of future trends in the domestic tourism industry indicate that it will retain its market share, and rural areas will become yet more favoured as holiday destinations:
Britain will remain a popular destination for the main and second holidays of the British because of the convenience of travelling (30% of all reasons offered in a consumer survey) and the desire to see the countryside (29%). Cost was third most important at 24% (Mintel 1990).
The short break market will continue to expand, particularly for short holidays in British countryside destinations, against a background of stagnation or decline in domestic long holidays and a shift away from coastal destinations (Mintel 1990; English Tourist Board 1991; Cooper and Latham 1992).
Activity and special interest holidays will continue to grow in popularity - a majority of the former rely on the resources of the countryside (Mintel 1990; Martin and Mason 1993).
THE BRITISH VISITOR INDUSTRY
Defining the UK visitor industry is as difficult as defining the activity and its participants. The English Tourist Board considers that:
"... the tourism and leisure industry is unlike any other economic activity in the UK in that it cannot be isolated by the goods or services it provides. It is not an industry in itself, but a consumer activity whose employment effects are spread across a wide range of industries." English Tourist Board 1986c
At the national scale, it is made up of private, public and voluntary sector components. Government is deeply involved - its agencies provide a majority of the infrastructure, and are also
involved in regulation and promotion, for instance. An enormously diverse range of voluntary bodies is involved with the industry to varying degrees, including organisations as big as the National Trust, which runs some of the largest attractions, right down to local amenity societies. The private sector, that part of the industry with the most immediately influence over incomes and spending, consists of large numbers of small business and self-employed people, often only partly dependent upon visitors for revenue, and a relatively small proportion of large-scale companies (Slater 1985; Tourism Society 1989).
TOURISM IN RURAL AREAS Defining Rural Tourism
Given the difficulties of defining tourism, the definition of rural tourism adopted in this study will be one that is concise and understandable; rural tourism is:
"... a trip to, or overnight stay in, a countryside area which is either agricultural or natural and has a low density of population."
Gilbert & Tung 1990
This definition has the merit of covering both day visitors and staying tourists. Visitor Levels
In this section, the available literature on the development and characteristics of the market for rural destinations is reviewed to provide an outline of the potential of the industry to contribute to rural economies. The countryside is enormously popular with day and staying visitors. Rural areas have long taken the bulk of recreational visits made in Britain (see for instance Middleton 1982), and today nearly half the population visits the countryside every month, and three-quarters do so each year (Countryside Commission 1991a, 1991b). Sundays are particularly popular - up to eighteen million visits are made on a typical Sunday in summer, and up to 10 million in winter. In 1990, about 76 per cent of the population of England visited the countryside at least once, making a total of approximately 1,640 million visits (Countryside Commission 1991b).
The majority of visitors in the countryside are day trippers on trips from their home bases (Countryside Commission 1991b). Despite this, estimates suggest that nearly 100 million bed-nights are spent in accommodation in the English countryside each year (Broom 1989) and, during the summer months, as many as 20% of all users of the countryside are on holiday (Countryside Commission for Scotland 1985a).
Rural areas differ from resort towns and cities in that an integral part of their attraction power is that only small numbers of people are generally likely to be encountered during most trips. There
are many popular attractions located in the countryside, but most countryside tourism trips are to the ’unmanaged’ countryside (Countryside Commission 1989b). In terms of all rural visitor destinations, locations attracting large numbers of people such as Chatsworth House (345,000 in
1991) and Alton Towers (1.9 million in 1991) are exceptional - the majority of places that could be described as individual destinations do not receive anything like those sort of numbers.
History
The growth of interest in visiting rural areas for outdoor recreation and sports is ably described by Harrison (1991). Until the last century, urban perceptions of rural areas were very often that they were places of back-breaking agricultural drudgery and dangerous elemental forces; while individual locations such as seaside resorts and inland spas had been popular with the wealthy, public attitudes and the poverty of the majority of the population had limited the levels of visitors to the countryside.
The writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge and later romantics helped change attitudes (Thomas 1984), and the advent of mass personal transport in the early twentieth century paved the way for the growth of rural tourism and recreation to the levels seen today.
Reasons for Continuing Popularity
Countryside activities and life hold a deep-seated fascination for our predominantly urban population. Popular television programmes such as ’One Man and His Dog’ and the radio soap opera ’The Archers’ bring rural activities, landscapes, and concerns into urban dwellings. A longing for the countryside - however romanticised - is deeply ingrained in our national psyche. The growth in membership of organisations such as the National Trust and the RSPB (Lowe and Goyder 1983) has reflected the growth in interest and concern for the countryside and what might broadly be termed the rural heritage. The counter-urbanisation trend evident in the distribution of the British population can be seen as a logical extension of the idea of visiting rural areas - why not live there?
Other reasons why rural tourism is popular include:
♦ while towns are perceptibly becoming more congested, polluted and noisy, rural areas are seen as benefitting from clean air, peace and quiet, offering an appreciation of the seasons and natural rhythms;
♦ urban areas are becoming more and more alike in appearance: one of the fascinations of the British countryside is the variation it exhibits over quite small distances;
♦ interest in health and fitness issues has parallelled the growing societal conservation ethic highlighting the environment, and ’green’ consciousness has begun to take a hold on Western attitudes (English Tourist Board 1992c);
♦ trends away from seaside resorts as they become unfashionable and there is rising concern over the health risks of excessive sunbathing - poor weather is one reason for the relative attractiveness of rural tourism in more northerly latitudes, where good beach weather is rare during most of the year (Middleton
1982);
♦ a distinct trend away from packages, often resort-oriented, towards ’independent’ holidays, frequently countryside-oriented (Jones 1992); and
♦ interest in food and drink have focussed attention upon methods of food production and the agricultural industry.
Distribution
Definitive information on the distribution of rural visitors in the UK is unavailable. Visitor figures published by tourist boards do not generally differentiate between rural and other parts of their areas, and few areas of the countryside are comprehensively surveyed - the cost is prohibitive. Most of the data that is available is fragmented and of limited use, but the English Tourist Board has made an attempt to provide such data - see Table 3.
While the figures represent the best available estimates of all visitors in rural areas of England, no methodology is given, so it is difficult to determine how they were arrived at. The Board admits that the quality of the data is arguable, and they should be viewed only as broad indicators of distribution.
Bearing these points in mind, the figures confirm the popularity of the West Country with British staying visitors, although the high figure for East Anglia is not easy to explain. Overseas visitor nights are concentrated in the South-East, Thames and Chiltems, and the West Country. Levels of day visits are highest in densely-populated regions, as might be expected, including the South- East, North-West, Yorkshire and Humberside, and the Midlands. The natural and man-made attractions of Cumbria attract significant numbers of visitors to what is, nonetheless, a relatively remote part of the country; the figures for Northumbria, on the east coast of northern England, are relatively low, but illustrate that substantial numbers of visitors can be attracted to what is, arguably, a less attractive rural region.
Table 3 - rural tourism distribution by region 1986 Tourist Board Region British tourist nights in the countryside (million) Leisure trips to the countryside (million) Est’d overseas visitor nights outside main conurbations and large towns (million) Cumbria 6.4 50.7 0.8 Northumbria 3.4 11.7 1 North West 3.5 87.5 1.2
Yorks & Humbs. 8.7 82.2 0.4
Heart of England 9.9 89.7 2.3 East Midlands 8.2 40 1.6 East Anglia 11.4 40.7 2.8 Thames & Chiltems 5.7 26.3 4.8 West Country 17.4 43.8 4.8 Southern 6.7 30.3 1.6 South East 6.9 96.5 7.0 TOTAL 88.2 599.4 28.3
Source - English Tourist Board 1988a: figures from British Tourism Survey 1986; British Leisure Day Trips Survey 1986; and the International Passenger Survey 1986
The regional figures offer no indication of the distribution of visitors around destination areas within their boundaries, however. To this end, and as part of the same exercise, the English Tourist Board identified areas of the English countryside popular with tourists by mapping parts of the country where tourism expenditure exceeded an arbitrarily chosen figure of £200 per resident (English Tourist Board 1988a). The result of this exercise, shown at Figure 4, brings out the importance of such traditional locations as the West Country, the Lake District, and the Cotswolds, but it must be considered as only broadly indicative of the distribution of tourists in the countryside - it is unclear whether the Board differentiated between spending in rural locations and that in coastal resorts, for instance, and again it is difficult to determine how the information could have been obtained.
Figure 4 - Rural areas with tourism expenditure in excess of £200 per resident (England) Source - English Tourist Board 1988a
Despite the inherent limitations of the methods used, these data indicate the popularity with visitors of areas of countryside designated for the quality of their landscapes. However, there are many areas outside these receiving significant levels of tourism expenditure, and it is likely that if the figure of £200 per resident were reduced and the exercise re-run, many more rural areas would be seen to gain significantly from the tourist. While the level of visitor activity varies greatly over the British countryside, all areas will receive some expenditure, and day visitor spending, if added, would complete the picture.
The quality and quantity of information about rural tourism is slowly improving. Presently available information shows the enormous popularity of the Parks: the most visited are the Lake District and Peak District National Parks, which receive 24 and 22 million visitor days per year respectively (Countryside Commission 1992), and in 1992 a survey was administered simultaneously in all the English National Parks for the first time (Centre for Leisure Research
1992).
This spending is estimated to have contributed £1,764 million to rural communities in the form of wages, profits, and rents (Countryside Commission 1991b), demonstrating the critical importance of the visitor industry to the economy of the countryside, and particularly so to that of the National Parks (Coppock et al 1981).
Spending by Visitors in the Countryside
Spending in the rural areas of England by visitors totalled £12,432 million in 1990 (Countryside Commission 1991b). Half of all trips to the countryside involve spending money there, usually concentrated on services and products - the ETB estimates that day visitors account for 60% of the total (English Tourist Board 1988a). The purpose of day visitor spending is shown at Table 4.
Table 4 - Spending by day visitors in the countryside
Category
Average spend per trip (£)
Total per year
(£ million) %
Food & drink 3.05 5 002 40
Petrol 1.37. 2 247 18
Entrance fees 1.05 1 722 14
Impulse purchases 0.77 1 263 10
Crafts & souvenirs 0.39 640 5
Fares 0.17 279 2
Parking 0.1 164 1
Information 0.06 98 1
Other 0.62 1017 9
TOTAL 7.58 12 432 100
National Survey of Countryside Recreation 1990 (England)
The Market for Countryside Tourism
Consideration of the market for visiting the countryside is important because individual destinations need to develop the sort of products that will attract visitors. The visitor market for the countryside is diverse (Mintel 1990). The back-packing walker has different requirements to the young family looking for a day with an enjoyable lunch and somewhere for the children to let off steam, and elderly visitors prefer spending time in villages and small towns instead of the countryside ’proper’.
Holidaymakers and day trippers are the prime markets in the countryside - levels of business tourism are relatively low for obvious reasons, and VFR is of limited significance compared to urban areas. Recent ETB market research indicates that rural areas are well-placed to cater for the requirements of an important slice of the domestic holiday-taking population (English Tourist Board 1992b). In a major piece of research, involving qualitative focus groups and a quantitative survey of 1,500 people taking long holidays on Britain, the ten destination attributes most frequently rated as important in the choice of domestic holiday destinations included beautiful
scenery (number 1), attractive villages (3), and uncongested roads (6). Five key domestic long holiday market segments were identified:
♦ sun and fun; ♦ bucket and spade; ♦ sights and service; ♦ heritage and hikes; and ♦ get away from it all.
The last two segments, those which the countryside visitor industry could well target, are more up-market than the rest: visitors tend to be older, are much less likely to have children in the