The kids are arguing on the back seat and you know you’ll get caught in a traffic jam and risk missing the plane for the getaway you’ve been planning all year.
Holidays have become so fraught — and that’s before the concerns about security once you get to your destination — that Britons are staying at home. And not just any old home: they are ploughing their cash into static caravans and holiday homes, prompting record demand.
Park Leisure, which owns and operates 11 holiday parks across the country, commissioned a psychologist, Corinne Sweet, to find out why we are becoming staycationers.
Apparently, it removes the stress, keeps the family together, and mum and dad get to rediscover why they got together in the first place, she reported back. “Being able to get away quickly and regularly to a UK holiday home can provide an essential ‘sanity break’ in our stressful 24/7 lives. It enables you to feel in control, in a world where work, life, pressures feel uncontrollable,” Ms Sweet said.
Also, avoiding the airport and the Channel — if we’re off to the Continent — can provide a sense of “freedom and ease, making weekend or holiday travel a welcome experience, rather than an exhausting chore”, she said.
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Ahead of the bank holiday, Park Leisure said that demand for caravans and lodges was an unprecedented 10 per cent higher in August than the same month last year,
It said that one in five of us choose to buy a holiday home because of safety fears. Almost one in four of those polled, said that they had bought in Britain because of bad experiences they had had when travelling overseas, and the same number said they had done so to avoid driving in another country.
Two thirds said that they felt less stressed since they bought their holiday home and almost three quarters said that doing so had brought the family closer together.
Almost half said that their relationship with their partner had improved because buying the static caravan or lodge had meant they had more sex.
The findings following statistics published by VisitEngland earlier this week that said that 4.8 million Britons plan to go on holiday in the UK during the bank holiday break.
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The starting price for a caravan is about £15,000, while a luxury range model can fetch more than £300,000, Park Leisure said.