Welsh Journals

Holiday Caravanning in Wales: an Overview of the 1980 National Caravan Survey. P.R.FIDGEON Department of Geography, St. David's University College, Lampeter. (Received January 1983; in revised form March 1983) Abstract Until 1980 a national inventory of caravan site opportunity for Wales had not been produced. The Wales Tourist Board had twice during the 1970's attempted to construct such an inventory without success. This paper attempts to outline how such an inventory has been produced and assesses the significance of the caravan holiday in the Welsh economy. Introduction Tourism is now the second most important sector of the Welsh economy. It employs some 90,000 people per annum (Wales Tourist Board 1981). Self catering holidays in particular have risen substant- ially in popularity. This trend is exemplified at the wider British scale by the British Home Tourism Survey which considered that in 1979 British tourists took 132 million trips spending 675 million nights away from home. Despite a background of rising prices, un- employment and petrol shortages this figure represented a two per cent increase over that of 1978 making 1979 the best year for tourism by British residents since 1973. Wales' share of this market was 8% of the total number of holiday trips and nights spent away from home by British residents. The Rise of the Self Catering Holiday Table 1 shows that although the total Welsh holiday market has remained fairly steady during the last decade there has been con- siderable change as to the type of accommodation preferred. Holi- days in licenced hotels or guest house accommodation have fluct- uated between 1978 and 1980 with a tendency to decline in signifi- cance since 1975. In contrast the self catering holiday the caravan, chalet, flat or tent has shown less variation over the same period increasing its share of the holiday market. It is a trend that is equally applicable for the 'additional holidays' category with the notable exception of the camping holiday.