Holidaymakers get on their bikes for summer
Posted on in Cycles News , Outdoor News
Tour companies have reported 10-40% growth in bicycle vacation bookings this summer, according to Visit England.
As the summer holiday season gets under way, tour firms are reporting increases of 10-40% in bicycle holiday bookings. Some 3.8 million people, according to research by VisitEngland, are keen to take to the tracks on a bike holiday this year.
Holiday firms say a much broader range of Brits are now opting for sun, sea and spokes on trips ranging from the UK's national parks to Vietnam.
Cycling is now mass-market. With their enthusiasm boosted by Team GB in recent Olympics and the success of Team Sky, an estimated 2.5 million people turned out to watch the world's biggest cycling race in Yorkshire earlier this month, and tens of thousands of those Tour de France fans turned up.
"It's been a slow-burn trend," said Andrew Straw, marketing director of Skedaddle, a cycling holiday specialist based in Newcastle upon Tyne. "With Bradley Wiggins and then Chris Froome winning the Tour, and the Olympics, people are getting into cycling. It has become a bit cooler." Skedaddle's sales are 40% ahead of this time last year and inquiries since the weekend of the Tour's visit to the UK have increased by 50%.
Straw said that the biggest change in the market is that cycling is fast becoming a family holiday choice "More families want to keep their kids off the Xboxes and get them outside."
Exodus and Explore, major activity holiday operators, say growth in demand for cycling holidays is far outstripping alternatives such as trekking, walking or cultural trips. Explore says cycling holiday sales are up by more than 20% in the last nine weeks compared with the same period last year.
Andy Ross, head of product at Exodus, said: "It's not just advanced cyclists wanting to join our tough Tour de France-style trips; we're finding that lots of our travellers have only taken their bike out on the occasional weekend before, and are trying out our cycling holidays for the first time."
The interest in cycling holidays is part of a general surge in interest in saddling up in the UK, although official figures suggest the proportion of the adult population who cycle at least once a month fell back slightly to 14.7% in the year to October 2013 from 15.3% a year before.
Sustrans says that 50 million more journeys were taken on its 14,500-mile network of cycle paths last year compared with 2012, a 7% rise. It says that more than a third of the users of the network could have driven but chose not to. Meanwhile Halfords recently said sales in the last three months rose by more than a fifth compared to last year.
Are you seeing a change as the summer holidays approach? Let us know how the trend for cycling holidays has impacted on your business in the comments section below.