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It's the economy . . .

Latest government figures reveal a continued decline in the leisure travel market that will soon extend back almost three years.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday reported a 4% fall in outbound holiday travel from the UK in February compared with the same month a year ago. Yet the total number of overseas trips was flat year on year. Business travel is not suffering.

Part of the decline will be due to the changed date of Easter - with Easter Monday falling on April 5 last year, meaning the holiday get-away will have started at the end of March. However, the decline fits a wider trend - the number of leisure trips continues to fall despite a precipitous drop in 2009 when nine million fewer passengers travelled overseas.

Latest figures from leisure travel analyst GfK Ascent, reported today in Travel Weekly, show bookings for this summer to date fairing better than that. Sales for the season to date are down just 1%. Independent travel must be faring worse.

The ONS statistics also highlight the areas that are suffering. Travel to Europe was up 2% year on year in February, but down 5% to North America and 4% to the rest of the world.

These figures are worse than they appear because they include all trips, not just leisure. What is more, we know from GfK Ascent that Mexico - deemed part of North America - is the one long-haul destination to which bookings are up. So leisure travel to the US and Canada must be down considerably.

The high price of oil - $122 a barrel for Brent crude overnight - and high rates of Air Passenger Duty go some way to explaining the decline. But underlying it is the state of the UK economy and the impact of government cuts.

Average household income fell last year and will fall again this. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) forecast days ago that inflation, the fuel price and changes to tax and benefits this April would hit households to the tune of £910 on average. The CEBR warns: "The UK is now seeing a bigger fall in real disposable incomes than in the 1930s and the biggest fall excluding World War Two and the General Strike [of 1926] since 1921."

In the words CEBR chief economist Doug McWilliams: "Things are starting to look much more problematic." Or in those of Bill Clinton he he campaigned for his first term as US president during the downturn of the early 1990s: "It's the economy, stupid."

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Comments (176)

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I think you'll find that it was Clinton's campaign manager James Carville, talking to his staff, who coined the phrase 'it's the economy, stupid!'

I very much doubt that Clinton would have won any elections talking to the American people like that.

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Or if you work in the front line from end of January onwards and were refunding all those top winter destinations of Tunisa and Egypt or not taking last minute bookings for the whole Middle East / North Africa you may put it partly down to other reasons?

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