All this and much more of the recent Foreign Office survey will be obvious to anybody who has taken so much as a cross-Channel ferry. But who would have thought there would be so many regional differences in our idea of the perfect holiday. The young people who are most driven to experience “different cultures and meet different people” come from the southwest of England. It’s true that only a quarter of West Country folk claimed to enjoy this aspiration, but they are cosmopolitan and sophisticated compared with the West Midlanders: only 3% had a similar interest. The young folk of Birmingham and Wolverhampton are much more interested in going on holiday for sex: 30% had this in mind, twice the national average. Why is this — is there not enough sex to go round in the West Midlands? Incidentally, about 13% of West Midlanders say they go away in order to take drugs, presumably to take their minds off the lack of sex.
Let’s not be too hard on the West Midlands, though. After all, 5% of British holidaymakers say they go abroad on the look-out for a fight. You don’t have to travel to Faliraki to have spotted this: any British town will do. In fact, the most incisive observation came from the young holidaymaker who told the researchers that a fortnight’s holiday is “just like 14 Saturday nights rolled into one”.
Is it any wonder that so many of us now choose to spend Saturday night as far away from town centres as possible.