Staycation boom in Banstaple?  

Nick Hood, August 2011 

Escaping from the rolling road block of the M5 motorway into picturesque Devon in a warm August rain squall promised a voyage of discovery into the delights of this year’s must-take tourist activity in austerity-battered UK, the great British staycation.  

But it also provided a chance to take a look at the realities of the economy of the UK’s fourth largest county geographically which boasts some 1.1m permanent residents, of whom some 400,000 are economically active.  The county has 32,000 VAT registered enterprises and almost 70,000 self-employed entrepreneurs.   Employment is well above the norm at 74.1% and unemployment well below at 6.1% compared to 7.9% for the UK as a whole.  

But this is a low revenue, low wage environment.  Over 50% of Devon’s businesses have a turnover below the VAT registration threshold of £73,000 a year and people working there earn £2,600 per annum less than the national average.  Unsurprisingly, there are three times more people employed in agriculture and twice as many working in tourism than the UK norm. 

Another dampener of economic success is prehistoric communications, with very poor connectivity even to standard 2Mbps broadband, never mind to the far faster speeds demanded by business, social and tourist users alike.  The internet connection in an otherwise well-equipped holiday house with stunning views worked for just one brief and frustrating 90 minute spell over eight days. 

But despite this, recent research by Kingston University revealed that SMEs in the South West lead the regional table for innovation, show the greatest increase in headcount over the last three years and have the most optimistic outlook on growth.

Tourism is said to be benefiting from the impact of government spending cuts, shrugging off the closure of the South West Tourism board in March.  Domestic overnight trips taken in the UK were up 5% in the first quarter of 2011, confirming the impression of tourism leaders in the region and continuing the trend of 2010 when the other side of the equation, foreign visitor numbers in the South West were marginally up, in contrast to the national picture of falling overseas visitors.

And efforts abound to extend the normal tourist season, characterised by the extraordinary decision last month to approve plans to invest £50m in building what will be the UK’s longest indoor real snow ski slope in Weston-super-Mare at the former RAF Locking site.  Time will tell whether bottle-tanned celebs will flock there instead of Switzerland next winter. 

But why was the beach at Bideford almost deserted in the first week of August and why was the spotlessly clean and inviting Royal Plaice chippy in Appledore equally empty?  And why were there no queues at any of the iconic Hockings ice cream vans?  Even the big supermarkets echoed with the lack of shoppers, which seems strange in a market dominated by self-catering accommodation. 

Reflecting on a week characterised by too much food, an elegant excess of alcohol and way too many bedtime stories for the grandchildren, the unanswered question remains why were those 20 miles of the M5 so over-crowded in both directions if the region in general is relatively quiet? Answers on a post card to Basil Fawlty, please, or to the Secretary of State for Transport. 

This article also appeared in Financier Worldwide and Management Today