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Associate Article

 11 October 2008 09:01 BST

Is Britain holidaying its way towards financial crisis?

The days of a holiday being a once a year luxury are well and truly over. As peoples working lives become increasingly busy and stress filled it seems that the idea of a regular break from the daily routine has come to assume a more and more significant place in most our lives.

Indeed, it appears that the psychological importance of getting away from it all is beginning to blind many of us to the financial implications inherent in taking multiple expensive holidays over the course of the year. According to recent research carried out by Alliance and Leicester a worrying 44% of us don’t actually have the savings in place to pay for their holiday but jet off all the same. This absence of ready cash to fund holidays is, in many cases, causing people to resort to credit payments.

Despite the increasing affordability of holidays in these days of cheap flights it’s not necessarily the case that many of us are actually spending less money. In fact it would seem a significant proportion of us are simply seeing it as an excuse to shell out even more on two or more holidays. Most of us will go on a couple of holidays but the A&L survey indicates that as many as 11% of people in the UK stretch to a possibly rather indulgent 5 or more holidays in a year. It could be that with so many websites out there like skyscanner or cheap flights offering bargain basement flights with a few click of the mouse, booking the your next holiday in a bored moment at work is all too tempting.

Perhaps inevitably one of the knock on effects of all this holidaymaking is that there’s an emerging tendency for people to take a second holiday before having paid for the previous one; not surprising when you take into consideration that more than a fifth of us spent a year paying for our last holiday.

There is a concern that, whilst a bit of holiday spending is par for the course these days, too many of us are burying our heads in the sand when it comes to financing our travels. Ross Dalzell, Manager for Savings at Alliance & Leicester said “So much time and effort is put into booking and planning our holidays, it’s important that the same attention is given to considering how to fund them. Setting up a holiday fund and putting what you can afford by each month is the best way to ensure that you’re not still paying for your holiday fun long after your tan has faded.”

Research was carried out online for Alliance & Leicester by YouGov between 3rd and 8th May 2007 aged 18+ in Great Britain. Total sample size was 2315 GB adults, and the data is weighted to be representative of the GB adult population.

Adult 18+ GB population: 44,200,000 (Source: YouGov)

Ross Dalzell is the manager for Savings at Alliance & LeicesterEnd of story

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