The U.K. is grappling with a £2.8 billion drop in overseas visitor spending, as tourist numbers remain below pre-pandemic levels. The Telegraph has more.
According to a new report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), Britain attracted 38 million tourists in 2023, down from a 2019 peak of 40.9 million. Projections for 2024 suggest only a slight improvement, to 38.7 million. Furthermore, spending by tourists has also declined by 8%, translating to a £2.8 billion dip when adjusted for inflation.
While the CEBR cites “general cautiousness surrounding international travel”, it also says that Britain is being outperformed by its main competitors in Europe. “The U.K. is falling behind its closest competitors as a tourist destination,” the report said.
According to the latest United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) statistics, U.K. visitor numbers in 2023 were still 5.6% down on 2019, placing the country towards the bottom of the European table when it comes to growth – below France, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Netherlands and Croatia, among others, though faring better than Italy and Germany.
So why such a slow uptick, and why are other countries having more success? …
The World Economic Forum ranks the U.K. 113th out of 119 countries for price competitiveness of travel and tourism. Food and transport in particular are expensive, and this will inevitably deter some people who might otherwise come.
The CEBR report says that overall prices in the U.K. for 2024 are expected to be 23.5% higher than in 2019, with accommodation costs up by 35.8%, restaurant prices by 28.7%, and airfares by 47.6%.
For those who watch the news, the U.K. has not had the best promotional campaigns. Raw sewage at the seaside, rising knife crime, chaos on the railways and even the axing of HS2 are hardly enticing images. …
In the most recent Anholt-Ipsos report on Nation Brands, the U.K.’s “Welcome” ranking fell to 19th place out of 60 nations – the lowest ever received for this measure.
In this context, “Welcome” refers to factors such as “Positive interaction with locals”, “Helpful hotel staff”, “Friendly service in restaurants”, “Stress-free airport experience”, “Ease of getting around” and “Smiling faces”. …
Oxford Economics forecasts that the U.K. will fall further in terms of its international tourism reputation, not only globally (where the Middle East is the fastest growing region) but also against its major western European rivals. …
The Government’s target was to recover inbound numbers to 2019 figures by the end of 2023, but all the data indicates the U.K. won’t hit that target even by the end of 2024.
Richard Toomer, Executive Director of the Tourism Alliance – an umbrella organisation for more than 70 associations and bodies – says the Government ambition was the right one, but policies have hindered it.
“An absolutely key one was the decision to abolish tax-free shopping for international visitors. We are now the only major European destination not to offer this service, which is a key driver for many long-haul visitors,” he says.
Worth reading in full.
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It wasn’t Brexit that forced EU drivers out of the UK.
For starters, the process to apply for residency was very easy and had a high success rate. If you had a job, it was pretty much guaranteed.
Secondly, and more importantly, only 10% or so of drivers were from the EU.
Fact is, drivers either retired or quit of pay and/or bad working conditions, and there was no opportunity for new ones to replace them.
“Fact is, drivers either retired or quit of pay and/or bad working conditions, and there was no opportunity for new ones to replace them.“
Some of us pointed out that the result of allowing employers to boost profits by using immigrant or foreign labour to undercut indigenous labour would be declining pay and conditions, and reduced investment in training. It wasn’t rocket science.
On top of that, the inherent incompetence of government, boosted to extreme levels by covid nonsense, gave us a DVLA that has been utterly unfit for purpose.
But as always, the responsibility for all of this, if not all of the blame, should rest with the government that has been in power for two years. They should have seen this coming and they should not have fallen for the covid panic. It was their responsibility, and their duty.
The regime and the wider political and social elite it represents and draws from has lost the mandate of heaven. Now we wait for a new force to arise and seize it.
The DVLA blame lies with the permanent “civil” “service” and they need a thorough sacking.
I still fondly remember spending something like 45 minutes taking selfies on the phone while a getting a “computer says no” response to each of them, alternatingly complaining there was no face in the picture or my eyes had been closed (both wrong all the time).
Very easy indeed.
I did not have such an experience. First photo I took was accepted. Still, 45 minutes of trying to take a photo vs quitting your job and moving your whole life to a different country. Which one sounds more acceptable?
Spending 45 minutes with kicking against a computer generating a stream of nonsensical error message in the hope that it’ll eventually give in and because there’s simply no other choice doesn’t qualify as very easy. From a UX perspective that’s well beyond so insanely complicated that no human being can ever be expected to handle it sucessfully.
“45 minutes with kicking against a computer generating a stream of nonsensical error message in the hope that it’ll eventually give in and because there’s simply no other choice“
Sounds pretty similar to a significant fraction of all my interactions with government agencies over decades, to be honest.
Like I said, I cannot relate to your experience. I installed the app, took a photo of myself, scanned my passport, and that was it. I have no idea what you mean by “complicated”. It was pretty much one button on each screen.
I too find a lot of .gov sites very convoluted and badly designed, especially since I need to access HMRC’s site a lot. But this app was actually not bad.
That it happened to work well for you on one occasion doesn’t mean it happened to work well for everybody else on all kinds of different occasions.
And what I mean by complicated is (as I’ve already written) spending about three quarters of an hour taking and uploading photos which were all rejected with the wrong error “there is no face on this photo” or the equally wrong error “the eyes of the photographed person were closed”. I mean, people always close their eyes when taking photos of themselves, it’s naturally the thing one would do in order to accomplish as task which requires looking onto a screen.
And that doesn’t even account for the abouf half of a dozen odd crashes by either the app or the underlying web service encountered while getting to this place.
I know several people that have went through it without issues. And I can tell you the same: Just because it happened to not work for you on one occasion doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for anyone else.
I’m having some real difficulties to understand the point of this conversation: You made a general statement. I provided a specific counterexample. Hence, your general statement is wrong. Elementary logic.
I didn’t claim that the app/ webserver would always malfunction in seriously user-unfriendly ways, only that it did so in my case (which strongly suggests that it behaved equally badly for a lot of other people, given the sheer number of people who were forced to use it and that software behaviour is deterministic).
I’m also familiar enough with the un-niceties of (WWW-centric) software development to know that a known failure rate of say, 1 in 100 cases would be called “99% reliable” and considered to be ready for use. This would amount to about 35,000 people having a really hard time using it and while that’s a relatively small number, absolutely, it’s a pretty large number. Nobody would accept this for any kind of non-computerized appliance: Assuming I’m trying to switch the heating on and it fails to turn on, that would be called a broken switch in need of being repaired and not an invitation to keep trying as it might well work next time.
I made a general statement, not an absolute statement. That is where your mistake lies.
Technically, you didn’t make a general statement as you only wrote that it was very easy for you. However, from the context, it was pretty clear that it was supposed to be a general statement as you basically asserted that no EU citizen resident in the UK prior to Brexit could possibly have had any issues with EUSS etc because it was easy for you. And this general statement is – like all general statements – wrong if a single counterexample exist. At least one counterexample does exist. Hence, it is wrong.
I don’t quite understand why the fact that This government IT project is suffering from the same issues as all government IT projects (and basically all this low quality everyday software whose bugs we all keep working around all the time as well) seems to annoy you, however, I don’t really care, either.
Now you’re just making up stuff. I can do the same:
From the context it is pretty clear to me that you are basically asserting that absolutely no one was able to submit their application for residency, which is patently untrue as at the very least, I and a few others had no trouble.
If we start inventing BS like that, there is no limit.
I am not making claims that no one had problems. I am making a claim that in general there was no problem for anyone to apply. The fact that you had problems and still went through proves my main point, which is that Brexit is not to blame for the driver shortage, as it is very easy to apply.
On the other hand, you keep making claims that it’s not at all easy, that since you had a difficult time, then I am the exception, and not you. Claiming that “this government IT project is suffering from the same issues as all government IT projects”. It seems like you’re the one making very wild, unsubstantiated claims.
I won’t continue to engage with you on this. My point is very clear, and your case even proves me right: not even 45 minutes of struggling with errors has deterred you, so why would it deter tens of thousands of lorry drivers?
Exactly. My dad used to be an hgv driver, then became a driver trainer (more regular hours). Back in the day, pay and conditions were good, some people would self-fund their training. Hasn’t been like that for a while though
This doesn’t surprise me at all. Plus I know that there were lockdowns everywhere but I wouldn’t want to continually drive back and forth to the UK to deliver goods if my prize was constantly having swabs shoved down my throat. Presumably not present in Schengen area, although I know a couple of countries tried to back out of that for a while.
Lockdown repercussions are biting now.
Regardless of the reasons some qualified HGV drivers have stopped driving the substantive issue is that they have not been replaced because we are paying the DVSA not to issue licences. How on earth has that situation been allowed to persist?
Repealing IR35 would help too.
yet more unintended consequences of stupid legislation that the government claimed would make them bazillions and everyone else pointed out would not only cause employment mayhem but would lose them as much if not more in VAT as they claimed they would make in extra income tax.
IR35: tax the contractors because the company that employs them is skimping on tax. Yep, a brilliant idea.
Not just lockdown. All government interventions related to COVID-19 did their part to demoralize the workforce. Why bother with personal efforts or sacrifice if you see public money wasted in most ridiculous ways around you, the greatest liars and halfwits getting most reward, and your ability to spend it according to your wishes is rationed out to you by those same people?
Basically, what’s happening is that the work morale is shifting toward what was the norm in former Soviet bloc countries – whether you worked or not, you would get some subsistence money, and you had few chances of obtaining more unless you had party connections. So generally, you didn’t give a shit about contributing anything over what was strictly required (and sometimes actively sabotaged production just to show resistance).
The lorry drivers might be the least problem, the real issue is what this dimwit regime does to highly abstract jobs that require highly educated and self-motivated people. Not everyone among those is happy to become an active collaborator or a cog in a ruthless corporation. And when those creative “atlases” shrug and are replaced by mediocre loyalists whose only idea of progress is more surveillance and coercion, the civilized world may become fucked up beyond all recognition.
The core issue is the disappearing illusion of personal responsibility and the ability to influence your fate – simply because it’s more clear than ever that it can be destroyed at a whim of some people with guns.
This sort of psychological destruction cannot really be measured, but it will bear fruit for the forthcoming decades. The longer all these despotic “measures” are in place, the more poisoned people’s minds will become from them.
Today’s terrorists don’t need guns. Pure terror does the job on its own.
Yes, at some point these loonies will realise that their luxury is created in part by real science not by fakers, and that thinking things are so doesn’t make them so. Try flying an aeroplane based on a lie. It will be too late probably.
This is a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.
IFAICT, the flow of qualified British drivers was principally affected by 3 things:
When the govt does all these things at once, the only real cause is their own gross incompetence.
There is no driver shortage.
If there was, problems would have occurred and been felt at the consumer end gradually and over all products.
Not suddenly and culminating in the 1 super strategic product mainly/only.
The people themselves are acting completely rational.
This is a manufactured crisis/conspiracy by the government/MSM/big oil to test the waters for the upcoming climate change restrictions, get people to buy more electric cars, charge higher energy prices, get people used to see the army in the streets, reduce traffic in light of rising Covid cases, deflect from the arising vaccine deaths catastrophe and so on.
My contacts in Italy tell me there’s a shortage of drivers there, supposedly. What’s the common factor, Brexit or Lockdowns & coronamadness?
There was a graphic in the DM article about this that I linked the other day that suggested there are driver shortages all across Europe, worst in Poland, next in Germany and UK, and also bad in Italy, Spain France, the Nordics, Ukraine and Belarus (I see they touchingly still cling to pretending Crimea is part of Ukraine, by the way. Never let a good, potentially useful casus belli go to waste…)
I didn’t see a source for the numbers but they quote a Euro driver union apparatchik as saying:
“Pay is an important area but not the only area. People in Europe and across Europe have completely lost trust in this industry.
‘Before the coronavirus crisis and Brexit this industry was sick already. Plagued by expectation, by irresponsible multinationals who drag down prices, which ended up with drivers voting with their feet and leaving the industry.”
Angry trucker claims he has not been able to renew HGV licence that expired a YEAR ago despite desperate calls to DVLA- as it denies staff WFH strike led to 54,000 backlog
I don’t live in England – I left when I was 24 back in 1971 – it was getting too crowded then, at least for me and I moved about as far away as I could get and now I am permanent resident of another country these past 45 years, however, I keep an eye on my birth country and enjoy many of the reality TV shows produced there, which I get “online”.
In my opinion, the problems you are having in England, like empty shelves in the shops and the shortage of drivers to distribute fuel to the garages, is a direst consequence of Brexit and things will only get worse, because of the new taxation arrangements for incoming trucks and what they carry and the repercussions of that.
I understand that Australia and New Zealand, which were the market gardens of England, prior to England joining the common market (while I was still in England – it happened after I had left) and now Aussie and New Zealand are to provide supplies, just like they did before, but with Covid and shut downs over there, it has stopped shipments pretty much from the get go and England has to fend for itself, which it obviously can’t do and as such, most food and other import lines are not getting shipped and England is being left to fend for itself, which again, it can’t do, given what is still available against what is being imported, to feed, cloth and provide you all with the goodies of life, which “they” simply can’t do.
Good Luck to all of you, with winter approaching fast, I think Brexit was the worst thing you could have done, but majority rule was what decided that and if anyone is too blame for the crisis you find yourselves in now, choosing Brexit was probably the bullet to the head you didn’t need, followed up closely with Covid, which is a bio-weapon, designed to terminate billions, with the vaccines, which are the other half of the bio-weapon situation.
I offer a condensed version of my free cure for Covid anything – kill the Flu/Coronavirus in your head, before it gets to become Covid anything, simple, free and 100% effective against Flu and all virus like symptoms:
You cannot catch Covid! Always breathe through your nose and keep your mouth shut, because you really don’t want the Coronavirus to seed itself in your lungs!! My free salt water cure has “absolutely nothing” to do with mRNA test vaccines. Treating Coronavirus with my free iodine salt clean water cure, flushes out the nasal cavity and kills Coronavirus, before it gets to be Covid, irrespective of if you have had mRNA vaccines or not. Mix one heaped teaspoon of iodine salt in a mug of warm or cold clean water, cup a hand and pour some of the solution in, then sniff or snort that mugful up into your nose, spitting out everything which comes down into your mouth, by so doing, you flush out your nasal cavity, where Coronavirus lives. If you get a burning sensation (which lasts for 2-3 minutes) then you have a Coronavirus infection.When the soreness goes away, blow out your head with toilet paper and flush away, washing your hands afterwards and continue doing my salt clean water nasal cavity flush cure, morning, noon and night, or more often, if you want, until, when you do my free salt water cure, you don’t experience any soreness at all in your nasal cavity. While you are at it, swallow a couple of mouthfulls and if you get a burning sensation in your chest, then you are killing the Covid/Bronchitis there too, so keep it up, each time you do a salt water sniffle, until the soreness in your head and lungs goes away – job done. Pour some of the solution on a flat surface and allow to dry and see what you have then. This is what coats the nasal passages in your head and kills Coronavirus/Covid off. You can see why it is so effective. This is what I have done for the past 27 years and I am NEVER ill, nor do you need to be either.
Please pass it around to everyone who wants to give it a try.
Cry wolf and woe betide you if there ever is a wolf – everyone will have gone deaf
And here comes the Army to help deliver fuel.
Real reason: to get the public used to seeing military personnel on the streets.
It’s all so bloody scripted and obvious when you have eyes to see it.
Some drivers of retirement age and others near it, have been unable to get appointments for the required (paid for) periodical medicals they need to renew their HGV licences and have decided to retire or get other driving jobs like grocery delivery by van which don’t require it. This is apparently one cause of “shortages”.
The following video (a bit long) is a couple of “old hand” UK drivers replying to being asked their view about the current alleged shortage. Quite interesting I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zUqmOjnnF8
I think the probability that COVID was the primary factor is high. Just put yourself in their place – what would you do?
I heard that the DVLA has a backlog of 50,000 HGV licences applications / renewals, they blame COVID and that the driver’s organisations warned the government months ago and they chose to ignore.
The extent to which civil servants have been paid for not doing their jobs is a scandal. It should be a major issue for the proposed inquiry. But it will be whitewashed as “due to covid”.
Now what they plan to do is to speed up and curtail the HGV learning process and take out elements of the test which will lower safety standards and will inevitably result in deaths on the roads.
Really? What safety standards will be lower?
No shit, Sherlock.
Foreign drivers went home because of lockdown, not knowing if they’d be able to get home at all if they left it too late.
And ALL driving lessons and tests were cancelled for months, rather than keep everything in place for HGVs.
Piss up/brewery like just about everything the government has done in their so-called handling of Covid.