Survey reveals that EU school travel to the UK is 61% of pre-Brexit levels
August 2023 - Sport, Leisure and Tourism
Survey reveals that EU school travel to the UK is 61% of pre-Brexit levels: A survey conducted by Tourism Alliance has revealed that EU travel to the UK is at 61% of the previous pre-Brexit level in 2019. This is due to passport problems and other issues including UK authorities no longer accepting ID cards issued by the EU for travel to many countries. This has resulted in schools opting for other English-speaking countries like Malta or Ireland for their school trips, according to the research.
Tourism Alliance carried out the survey and gathered responses from 145 businesses, who collectively brought over 700,000 school children on trips to the UK in 2019. The research was conducted to highlight the barriers to school travel and to assess the impact that the barriers are having on businesses organising the trips. The businesses involved expect to recover their school trips to the EU to 108% of the 2019 figures in 2023. This is in comparison to the companies who run trips to the UK, who are only expecting to recover their school trips to 61% of the 2019 rate this year.
Barriers to recovery
The survey also investigated the barriers preventing businesses from recovering to their pre-Brexit rates. The businesses taking part were asked to rank factors on a scale of 1-5, where 1 = “not at all important” and 5 = “extremely important” when bringing groups into the UK from the EU. Almost three-quarters (74%) said that the requirement for all school students to have a passport to enter the UK was “extremely important”, as a barrier, compared to only 4% who ranked covid-related concerns as a 5. Over half the respondents polled (56%) ranked the increased cost of travel barrier as 5, which was the second highest factor seen as “extremely important”. The two other factors that some businesses believed were “extremely important” were concerns regarding safety (20%) and concerns about delays at the border (29%).
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