Britain is pricing itself out of the holiday market – here's how to get a better deal

Telegraph

23-02-2025

Are holiday cottage owners in Britain pricing themselves out of the market, or has our interest in staycations stultified? Although airfares to the Med are currently terrifyingly expensive, my research suggests that advance bookings for holiday rentals in this country remain surprisingly weak – even for the peak school holidays.
As I reported last month, the cost of flights during those key holiday dates has rocketed over the last two or three years. Anyone who hasn't already booked an overseas holiday and is looking for flights to the sunbelt on peak dates is – for some destinations – facing return fares of up to £5,000 for a family of four.
That's obviously way above what most of us can afford, so it would seem logical that this would be the year when British holidaymakers would be tempted back to our own beaches and national parks. Why pay all that money to fly overseas when there are so many cheaper alternatives on your doorstep?
Yet when I checked out the major holiday cottage sites to see how well bookings were going for those same school-holiday pinch points, that logic doesn't seem to apply. Traditionally travel companies are reticent about giving out meaningful figures. It is obviously better for business to imply that it is vital to book as soon as possible. But the great thing about the technology used on these booking websites is that it's very straightforward to see what proportion of the cottages are still available, and how many are being offered at a discount.
My check on the website of the biggest supplier, Sykes Cottages, revealed that, at Easter and for the first peak week of the school holidays in July, only about 40 per cent of its cottages in England have been booked. Things are busier for the May half term, but still only at 50 per cent sold. It's a similar story at another of the major companies, cottages.com, where about a third of its properties are booked both for Easter and the school summer holidays, and a little less than half for the May half term. Many properties, even for the summer dates – which are still some five months away – are being offered at varying discounts of up to 20 per cent by both companies.
Meanwhile, the upmarket Classic Cottages, which has 1,323 cottages on its books and concentrates mainly on the West Country (though it does have some other options in other parts of the UK), still had 884 available at Easter, 819 at half term and 694 for the first week of the school summer holidays – though it does say that the latter figure actually represents a better performance than this time last year. Even the National Trust, which has some of the most appealing and sought-after properties, still has 156 out of a total of some 500 available at Easter and 128 for the first week of the school holidays.
Obviously there is more than one reason behind this contrast between sky-high airfares to Europe and a reluctance to book holidays in the UK. According to both cottages.com and Classic Cottages, the tendency in recent years for people to commit only at the last minute masks the true strength of interest. Cottages.com says that it sees more and more customers booking only four to six weeks ahead, so the final booking figures will be much stronger.
Classic Cottages moots the possibility that the trend towards later bookings for UK holidays might even be driven partly by the fact that airfares to the Med tend to rise nearer departure, whereas cottage prices don't. Indeed, they are more likely to be discounted.
The psychological impact of the grim British weather last 'summer' is also surely a part of the story. If your main summer holiday was spent in a rainswept seaside resort, you may well have rethought your plans for 2025.
But what these figures also suggest to me is that there seems to be both an oversupply of holiday cottages and – more significantly – that the cost of renting them is so high that it is putting people off. Try and find a good quality house for a family in a popular destination during the summer and you are unlikely to get much change out of £2,000. That may be cheaper than going abroad because you don't have to fly, but does it offer decent value? Perhaps not when you can easily find a sunny villa with a pool in Spain or Portugal for the same money. And especially when you consider the cost of entertainment and eating out in this country.
Whichever way you look at it, the lesson seems to be that if you want to pay less for a holiday in the UK this year, don't book until nearer the departure date. There are bound to be plenty of discounted deals.