Holidays ‘will be more like the 1970s’

Britons are set to enjoy holidays from the 1970s after lockdown – with family drives to the seaside more likely than trips abroad.

Staycations are set to boom as the lockdown is eased with holidaymakers choosing to stay close to home rather than jet off on international trips.

Russell Imrie, managing director of Queensferry Hotels, said the future of holidays will look more familiar to the older generation, than people who today are used to cheap air travel.

Queensferry Hotels owns Keavil House in Dunfermline and Bruntsfield Hotel in Edinburgh, which trade under the Best Western banner.

Mr Imrie, who is also a spokesman for the Edinburgh Hotels Association and president of the Best Western Great Britain group, expects they will be welcoming much smaller groups of customers once they reopen as the social distancing era continues.

Mr Imrie said: “For travel in the UK, it is almost as if it is going to go back to the 1970s, where we are all going to go into our cars as a family, and we are all going to drive to the seaside, the forests, the coasts and the country.

“The era of cheap air travel and international travel is going to take so long to come back that we are going to be having breaks that will look familiar to our parents, and not the generation that is used to travelling today.”

Some 99 of Queensferry’s 115 staff have been placed on furlough, with a skeleton staff retained to look after the buildings and deal with customer inquiries.

Mr Imrie said it could be August or September before large social gatherings are considered, meaning the traditional spring and summer period for weddings will be lost this year.

He said: “If that is delayed until the autumn at the earliest, that is a huge proportion of revenue (lost) for hotels, especially rural country hotels.”

We are going to be having breaks that will look familiar to our parents. RUSSELL IMRIE