While its visitors have been stuck at home during lockdown, English Heritage has sent staff armed with tape measures to every one of its 420 castles, old houses and ancient monuments to arrange safe social-distancing.
Kate Mavor, chief executive, said once restrictions were lifted, this would be a good year to visit UK attractions that would normally be overrun with foreign tourists: “It’s going to be much, much quieter than usual because no one is going to come from overseas. Sixty-five per cent of our visitors to Stonehenge normally come from overseas”.
English Heritage is one of many operators preparing for a potential summer of “staycations”, as international restrictions, including a 14-day quarantine for returning British travellers, limit overseas holidays.
But despite the UK government announcing a “very ambitious plan” to kick start the domestic holiday industry last week, tourism businesses are unconvinced that opening in July — as the advice suggested — will be enough to salvage a sector already on its knees after losing the key Easter and May holidays.
“I don’t see any kind of positive apart from it will be less shit if we open in July and August,” said Mark Cribb, who owns a 12-room hotel in the seaside town of Bournemouth, as well as two restaurants and a beachfront pizza shack and bar. “The number of businesses in tourism towns that won’t come out of this will be catastrophic.”
Many UK leisure operators worry their capacity will be severely limited by social distancing measures and that consumers will still be reticent to travel.
Some have faced a backlash from local communities who want to avoid city dwellers bringing a second wave of the virus.
Carl Castledine, a third-generation holiday park operator whose company, Away Resorts, runs six sites, said there had been signs of protest in local villages and that its park in Wales had been vandalised.
“People are frightened and scared. I get that to a point,” he said, but added that if he did not open for the summer because of another lockdown the threat of bankruptcy was “very real”.
The UK’s domestic tourism industry generated £91.6bn in consumer spending last year, according to VisitBritain. Around £25bn came from overnight stays and £67bn from day trips. The industry body projects that will fall by almost a quarter to £69bn in 2020.
Patricia Yates, acting chief executive of VisitBritain, told a committee of MPs last week that the “worrying thing” was consumer confidence. “Consumer sentiment at the moment isn’t looking like a bounce back,” she said.
A VisitBritain survey found that 74 per cent of those that had a UK holiday booked between July and September did not think it would take place.
This year people may be up for some iffy weather just so that they can get away
Yet the government’s announcements and recent hot weather have triggered some increase in demand.
Bourne Leisure, which runs the Butlins holiday parks, reported a rise in bookings for the autumn, while Mr Castledine said the past week had seen “by far and away the largest revenues for forward bookings” since lockdown began, with around 70 per cent making inquiries for this year.
The website 101 Holidays had a 200 per cent increase in searches for UK holidays last week, compared with the week before.
UK Airbnb hosts are blocked from accepting reservations from anyone but key workers until May 31 at the earliest. But the company said that in the US and Italy, which have begun to reopen incrementally, searches on its platform “dramatically” increased last month.
More than 90 per cent of Airbnb hosts have told the accommodation platform they plan to open their properties to guests when coronavirus lockdowns eased.
In preparation for a pick-up in demand, operators are readying their sites to balance the influx of visitors with the government’s health and safety guidelines.
Bourne Leisure said it had been using all its “skills and creativity” to come up with solutions, including increasing the frequency of shows and mealtimes to give guests more space.
Nick Varney, chief executive of Merlin, which runs attractions such as Legoland and Madame Tussauds, said the company was learning from its parks already open in Germany, China and New Zealand and would reduce hands-on experiences, manage capacity through online bookings, and make sure all employees who met the public wore masks.
Center Parcs and Away Resorts said making space between visitors was less of a challenge given the size of their sites.
Still, coping with renewed demand would be a “very real challenge”, said David Worden, leader of North Devon council. He noted that on Wednesday, when temperatures hit 27C in some parts of the UK, crowds flocked to the south-west county.
“There were hundreds of cars parked. County enforcement officers ran out of parking tickets . . . it’s going to be very labour-intensive and our finances are precarious because of the extra expenses,” he said.
One beach town hotelier said it was inevitable that with limited supply and demand high, prices would rise — although he did not want to discourage consumers when recession loomed.
Jarrod Castle, an analyst at UBS, said: “I don’t think companies that take advantage of these situations will be looked well upon when things normalise.”
One suggestion to ease the burden has been the addition of an October bank holiday, which has received a mixed response.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said this could encourage people to “escape out of the country” if overseas restrictions had been lifted by then.
But Fiona Marshall, head of the adventure holiday firm Macs Adventures in Glasgow, said it could be a useful extension of the season. “This year people may be up for some iffy weather just so that they can get away,” she said.
