Excerpt from The Guardian.
More than 40% of firms say they are likely to go under.
Despite increased domestic bookings to popular places such as Cornwall and the Yorkshire Dales, thousands of tourism businesses were not saved by last year's boom in British summer holidays.
A survey by the Tourism Alliance of 1,927 tour operators, hotels, attractions, language schools and other businesses that serve foreign tourists found that a total of 42% think they are likely to fail in the year 2022.
The first three months of the year are looking bleak, with the Omicron variant causing a spike in cancellation rates. A third of businesses have lost at least half of their domestic holiday bookings this year.
A quarter of those surveyed said they had no more money left, and half said they would run out in two months.
Kurt Janson, director of the Tourism Alliance, said that last summer saw crowded beaches and sold-out seaside resorts, but that masked an overall drop in domestic tourism away from coastal and rural areas. 303,000 UK travel businesses are represented by the alliance.
A lot of business travel and conferences have done badly, and there has traditionally been a huge amount of domestic tourism in towns and cities. Businesses that rely on international travel have not done well. Booking times for these things are longer.
Janson was worried about tour operators who were serving foreign visitors. If they don't promote the UK as a destination, inbound tourism will take a long time to recover from. They are fighting for our corner of the market.
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