I took a staycation this year, I spent August in Faversham – I had planned to daytrip and enjoy Kent. I did, but I didn’t go far. With visitors coming to stay I found myself as guide rediscovering the place where I am rooted, relishing its past and thinking about its future. In St Mary’s, the parish church which I watch, as the seasons change, from my study window, we have one remnant of the medieval frescoes which before the Puritans would have covered the whole interior. We have that remnant fresco because some individuals were brave enough not to scrape off the frescoes before whitewashing the pillars.

Staycation, the word is ugly an Americanism, a contraction meaning a stay-at-home-vacation. No English alternative has yet emerged. An opportunity to rediscover people and place to see your place, your home, as visitors see it.  Inviting friends to stay ensures that in showing them around your rediscover what makes your place special – a function of landscape, the vernacular architecture and most important the people. Being on the receiving end of VFR turns the tables the “holidaymaker enjoying their staycation becomes host and guide and to take extended leisure where they might otherwise work – well that’s the case for workaholics anyway.

Will the staycation catch on – obviously a lot of people tried it this year as consequence of the economic downturn and because it is the only way you can avoid the congestion on the roads and railways and the misery of Heathrow or Gatwick.

The weather drives us to travel

There is one obvious problem for those of us for whom the UK is home. Climate change and global warming is not proving us with those good summers some anticipated. We live on islands with weather coming off the Atlantic and that means that increased rain fall and cloud cover, rain and the absence of sunshine are characterising our summer climate. Extreme weather is becoming a more common occurrence.

August 2008 has been the sixth wettest August since 1912, and with one third less sunshine  – in Kent we hardly saw blue sky. The 30ºC barrier was breached only twice. As an autumn sets in the tour operators are reporting Mediterranean bookings up by as much 150% year on year. UK resorts were reported to be busier than usual this year. Lastminute.com and reposnsibletravel.com both reported higher domestic UK sales this year.

Counting the cost of travel

The main drivers of the staycation were the credit crunch and concerns about the impact of inflation in food and energy costs and declining property values on people’s disposable incomes. It was the actual rather than the ethical cost of travel which restrained us.

The annual holiday is for affluent consumers one of three big budget item purchases; moving, the annual holiday and the new car. The housing market is falling and in August new car purchases were at their lowest level since 1996 an 18.6% decline year on year, gas guzzling Land Rover sales were down 58% and Aston Martins down 67%.  The number of people putting money into private pensions declined by 1m to 7m, there will be fewer British affluent retired cruising in the future. Whitbread reports that sales are booming at its budget chain Premier Hotels, like-for-like sales up 10.2% and Whitbread plans to open a further 4,000 rooms, not surprising with its revenue PAR up 5.8%. Travelodge launched a credit crunch sale with rooms at £9 per night The Guardian reports that organic food sales had shrunk from £100m a month to £81m. These are turbulent times as disposable incomes shrink and the value of the £ falls.

Protourisme reports that booked nights are only down 2% in France (although that compares with steady year on year growth of 3% in recent years); holidays are being booked later, sales in bars and restaurants are reported to be down 10 to 30%. Spain reports an 8% drop in the number of foreign visitors year-on-year in July. 

UK consumers are going to feel substantially less well off, food and fuel inflation will reduce our standard of living but wetter summers, a likley consequence of climate change, may perversely maintain or increase our predisposition to jet off to the sun.