Three quarters of agencies surveyed following Visit England’s Holidays at Home are Great campaign, said they had noticed “some impact” on domestic travel.
One thousand agents were interviewed after the campaign, featuring Wallace & Gromit, aired for the second year running.
Head of trade partnerships Stuart Heath said the impact could have been an increased interest in domestic holidays from consumers, more customers asking about holidays in the UK, more people asking for domestic holiday brochures.
“We consider this to be really good news,” he said.
The results were released at the ‘Full English Breakfast’ briefing on domestic tourism, run by Visit England with trade partners Hoseasons, Bourne Leisure, SuperBreak and Shearings.
Commenting on the year to date for domestic tourism, Visit England deputy CEO Louise Stewart said: “The start of the year was wet and it was awful but by Easter, the market was back on its feet and in April, we had a 10% uplift in volumes and 5% in expenditure.
“By May, expenditure was up to 6% above what it had been in May the previous year, and there were 13% more holiday trips taken in 2013 than in 2012.
“It’s too soon to draw conclusions for this year, but the trend to holiday at home is strong. There has definitely been a shift and we don’t believe it’s a change that’s going to go away. 70% of people have changed their holiday behaviour over the last three years and that’s not just where they go, but how they do it.”
Stewart said that people were increasingly favouring short breaks, adding that city breaks had boomed and that rural breaks were also showing strong growth.
“But domestic tourism growth isn’t from people giving up their overseas holiday, it’s coming from the more affluent areas where people are taking two, three or four breaks somewhere.”
Hoseasons managing director Simon Altham added: “We’ve seen a 10% increase in short breaks. 70% of everything we sell now is short breaks and we also see this as people booking a number of extra trips in addition to their main overseas holiday.”