Suddenly, tourism has become a dirty word — and tourists increasingly are made to feel guilty about spending their hard-earned money and heading off to all corners of the globe.
This is manifestly unfair — and particularly unfortunate given that we Britons are the best (and, yes, sometimes not quite the best) tourists in the world, with an insatiable appetite for discovering new places and returning to much-loved old haunts.
Our weather helps, of course, but we are wedded to what Trollope called ‘the imperative duty of travelling abroad’.
But it’s not so much over-tourism that I’m grappling with, as the overt short-sightedness of those who look down their noses at the mass exodus that takes place at this time of year. That unfailing imperative to be somewhere else.
We Britons are the best (and, yes, sometimes not quite the best) tourists in the world, with an insatiable appetite for discovering new places and returning to much-loved old haunts
Those people firing water pistols at holidaymakers in Barcelona or occupying beaches in Majorca should train their fire on local politicians who have allowed a free-for-all
Protesters brandishing placards in favour of reducing tourism during a demonstration in Barcelona
Seldom a week goes by without someone clambering on his or her high horse and moaning about ‘inhumane’ security checks at airports, the scrum in departure lounges and one or two delays.
The good news is the moaners have a choice. They can stay put and need never darken an airport’s doors again, leaving the rest of us to enjoy the freedom that travel offers in all its various forms.
My colleague Peter Hitchens — whose opinions I don’t take lightly — wrote last week in these pages about how he feels ‘secretly ashamed’ of being a tourist and that he prefers to call himself, somewhat grandly, a ‘traveller’.
‘Remember that the place you are visiting … is not a Disneyland set up for your inspection and entertainment,’ he wrote. ‘Try not to destroy the very thing you have come to see.’
But if we all eschewed mass tourism and headed instead to some of the places that have captured Peter’s imagination — such as North Korea’s Pyongyang or the Kazakhstan capital, Astana — there really would be a black hole in the UK’s finances.
Outbound tourism is worth some £80billion a year to our national coffers, a figure which includes revenues generated by airlines, tour operators and travel agents. And it supports nearly three million jobs.
Amid all the talk about growing the economy, we should be encouraging the tourist industry — not questioning it.
That £80 billion is a tidy sum — but listen up, Rachel Reeves.
Research from the Advantage Travel Partnership, which represents independent travel agents, shows that in addition to the basic cost of a holiday, we spend on average £200 or more on related goods and services, including clothes, taxis, airport parking and such like.
By next year, the UK tourist industry — inbound and outbound — is expected to be worth more than £257 billion in all its forms, around 10 per cent of our GDP. These days, it’s not all about the money, whereas it was in both the distant and not so distant past.
In Victorian times, the Grand Tour of Europe was the preserve of a privileged minority, mainly male. Its purpose was to train the mind, provide some heirlooms bought in distant flea markets, and serve as a means for sons of the aristocracy to have sex before marriage without causing a scandal.
Thank goodness for Thomas Cook’s first package holiday in 1851 (a trip to the Great Exhibition in London, with train, hotel and tickets included), but even in post-World War II Britain, it was only the rich who could afford to board a state-owned BOAC plane and be served a three-course meal before landing in Cote d’Azur, Barbados or Kenya.
And let’s not forget that the idea of being paid to have a day off, let alone a week or two, is a relatively new phenomenon. It wasn’t until the Holidays With Pay Act of 1938 that a week’s annual paid holiday was recommended — but not enforced — for full-time workers. Dear old Sir Freddie Laker did his best to shake things up by launching the first ‘low cost/no frills’ airline in 1966 and although he crash-landed in 1982, the skies opened for the likes of Ryanair, EasyJet, Tui and Jet2. It’s hard to think of a better example of levelling up.
Tomorrow, nearly 3,000 flights will take off from the UK, according to aviation data analysts Cirium. Logistically, that will be quite an achievement — and we’re bound to hear about any failings in the system.
But what about the successes? I fly in and out of Gatwick airport on a regular basis — and have developed an affection for the place. It might not have the architectural kudos of Singapore’s airport or Abu Dhabi’s £2.4 billion terminal, which has become a tourist attraction in its own right, but, by and large, it works.
Almost 41 million passengers passed through Gatwick last year and that number is expected to rise substantially in 2024.
Contrary to what the grumblers would have us believe, getting through security in the newly upgraded North Terminal is almost always painless, the mood filled with expectation of care-free days to come.
I’ve even come to enjoy the snaking walk through Duty Free, replete with dressed-and-pressed beauticians offering a squirt of some cologne or other.
Even at 6am, they’ve slapped on the make-up as if ready for a riotous night on the town — and that’s just the men.
No, I’m not ashamed to be a tourist. There’s nothing I like more, in fact. It’s a chance to be a different person for a week or two, an opportunity not so much to find oneself but lose oneself.
It might all come to nothing once you’re back home and putting the same old rubbish into the same old bins — but holidays don’t just take you from A to B literally; they can transport you from one tried-and-tested reality to a world of new possibilities.
There’s a philosophical answer as well as a geographical one on being asked when returning from a break: ‘Where did you go?’
That’s why holidays sometimes can be unsettling. They throw up questions about ourselves that can be hard to answer. The old adage of ‘wherever you go, there you are’ is inescapable, just as the person staring at me in the mirror every day is, unfortunately, me.
Of course there are concerns about tourism. But it’s hardly the fault of tourists.
Those people firing water pistols at holidaymakers in Barcelona or occupying beaches in Majorca should train their fire on local politicians who have allowed a free-for-all, whereby houses are bought up with the sole intention of renting them out, unregulated, for exorbitant prices, making them unaffordable for locals.
But let’s not lose sight of the undeniable truth that tourism has lifted many countries out of abject poverty, developed a solid infrastructure and contributed to improved health and education.
Indeed, it’s estimated that tourism accounts for 10 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product.
My elder brother and I seldom went abroad as children. I think our parents — who married in 1950 — thought it a little vulgar, extravagant, decadent even. Certainly my grandparents did.
They lived in the Scottish Borders but got only as far as Bournemouth for what my grandmother described not as a holiday but simply a ‘change of air’.
The furthest my brother and I ventured was the Isle of Wight, which at the time did at least feel like a different country because of the ferry ride.
If my parents were alive now, I’m confident they would be in the ‘speedy boarding’ queue at Gatwick, although they might resent having to pay as much as £90 for a suitcase in the hold.
Such are the rigours of modern life that getting away from it all has become sacrosanct.
During and after the pandemic, when people were asked what they intended to cut back on as the cost of living crisis worsened, very few said holidays.
All sorts of surveys intimate the same thing: holidays are what a lot of people live for. They have become central to our very existence, a form of self-expression, a reaffirmation of family and friendship. A natural right.
What on earth is wrong with that?
