A travel agency boss has urged the trade to support efforts by the Family Holiday Charity to provide breaks for struggling families.
The call came from Advantage Travel Partnership chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said as the charity revealed that a record 1,854 families were helped with trips in 2022 thanks to additional finding from VisitEngland and the government.
However, research found that almost half of families had never travelled before and around eight million people pre-Covid had not taken a holiday.
New data reveals that:
- Around 25% of families in the UK have three or more dependent children. For the families supported by Family Holiday Charity, it’s more like 40%.
- One in four people will experience a mental health issue each year. For the families supported by Family Holiday Charity, the figure is double – around one in two.
- Around one in 20 families in the general population have experienced domestic abuse. For the families supported the charity, it is almost one in three.
- In the general population seven in 100 children are young carers for a parent or sibling, but for the families supported by the charity it is as high as one in five.
Lo Bue-Said, a trustee of the charity, called for cohesion on understanding why customers are not travelling and working with it to break down the barriers to tourism.
She said: “Together, we should learn more about the estimated 8 million people who aren’t going on holiday – if we understand why, we’ll know how we can work together to address the barriers and get them travelling.
“We can do this by bringing together the evidence and impetus to build change inside and outside the sector, so more children and young people go on to feel the positive benefits of a holiday for themselves.
“In the meantime, it costs the Family Holiday Charity around £600 to give a whole family their first tourism experience. The more funds the charity has the more chance we have to showcase the tourism experience to them first hand and motivate and inspire them to include travel in their lives in the future.”
Family Holiday Charity chief executive Kat Lee said: “The issues these families are facing are real and obviously preventing access to tourism.
“But should they have to? By choosing to understand the barriers families face to going on holiday it’s possible that we can give them tourism experiences that change attitudes to tourism and make tourism more accessible – something everyone in the sector can get behind as it improves everyone’s quality of life and also brings a new market opportunity, too.
“If you have never had a tourism opportunity you don’t know to prioritise it, or what it can bring to you or your family. When we show people and they feel it, they embrace it.”