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This article uses official government statistics to consider employment levels in the Lancashire Tourism industry. Anyone wishing to obtain details of tourist attractions and/or accommodation in the county should go directly to (External) visitLancashire.com .
Photograph of Whalley Abbey in Ribble Valley district
Tourism is important to the Lancashire economy and the (External) Lancashire Economic Partnership has put forward the regeneration of Blackpool and tourism and rural development as two of the six themes in the (External) regional economic strategy for the area . Analysing tourism employment figures is therefore useful in trying to identify progress towards achieving these two goals.
This article uses results from the (External) 2007 Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) to assess the numbers of employees in the Lancashire Tourism industry. Tourism is one of the most important economic activities in the UK. It not only has an economic impact, but also has a strong influence on other factors such as quality of life and improvements to cultural activities that are of benefit to local inhabitants.
Tourism in Lancashire is not just restricted to the leisure market, but also includes commercial visits, day trips and overnight stays, as well as internal visits within Lancashire. For these reasons the industry is best viewed as a market rather than a sector as it impinges across a wide variety of businesses. These range from historic houses and gardens, tourist offices, tour operators (which are solely devoted to serving tourists), through to hotels and restaurants (which primarily although not exclusively serve tourists) to sport and recreational activities, transport services and retailers, a proportion of whose turnover may come from tourists. Also, the businesses that serve tourists directly are supported by a variety of other (often local) firms, from food and clothing manufacturers and distributors to laundries, car hire firms and many others.
A variety of businesses in Lancashire have been listed in this article. Their inclusion emphasises the problem of trying to identify employees who should and should not be allocated to the tourism sector because of the range of services that can be undertaken by a single company. Multiple sites owned by a single business (some of which may be outside Lancashire) can also cause problems. Mention is also made of the fact that this particular classification of tourism employment does exclude a large number of employees whose jobs are dependent on tourists visiting the area.
Please note that the ABI figures take no account of the self-employed and there are also likely to be many family/casual workers (including agency staff) who escape official statistics altogether.
Table 1 details the Standard Industrial Classification headings from the Annual Business Inquiry that together present a definition of employee jobs in the Tourism industry. Tourism is one of the largest employment sectors in the 14 authority Lancashire NUTS-2 area. In 2007, the total of tourism-related jobs in Lancashire was 55,800 or 9.0% of all employees in employment in the county, 0.8 points higher than the percentage for Great Britain.
Arguably, it would also be valid to include within the official definition of "tourism" such entertainment activities as concert and theatre halls, fair and amusement parks, etc. These activities (classified within SIC 92.3 Other entertainment activities) would add another 2,500 jobs to the "tourism" total in Lancashire for 2007.
It is only necessary to think of the (External) Blackpool Pleasure Beach Theme Park to be aware that tourism employment is narrowly defined and that a broader classification would have a noticeable impact on the Lancashire results. The complementary sector profile on community, social and personal services includes employee numbers for theme/amusement park operators. Section 92.3 also includes employees at establishments such as the (External) Dukes Playhouse in Lancaster, the (External) Grand Theatre in central Blackpool, the (External) Marine Hall in Fleetwood and the (External) Thwaites Empire Theatre in Blackburn.
The (External) Winter Gardens in Blackpool is a theatre, but also a conference and events facility and may or may not be classified in this section depending on what is the main activity at the site for purposes of the Annual Business Inquiry.
Photograph of Rossendale Museum, one of the Lancashire County Museums
The Hotel and other tourist accommodation classification (55.1 and 55.2) accounts for a significant number of tourism jobs (11,400). Blackpool, not surprisingly, is a major location of employment in this sector and the website for (External) Blackpool Hotels and Guesthouse Association lists a significant number of local hotels, apartments and guesthouses in Blackpool.
(External) Morecambe is the other major seaside resort in Lancashire with an extensive range of accommodation. Of note in the hotel section in 2008 was the reopening of the famous (External) Midland Hotel on the Morecambe sea front.
A business that classifies its main activity under the Hotels sector would have all its employees classified to sector 55.1, including those employed primarily in the bar or restaurant, however in practice the situation may be more complex. For example, (External) Northcote Manor in the Ribble valley is an exclusive hotel with a reputation for the quality of its restaurant and its offsite catering functions. It may therefore have all its employees classified under section 55.1 or 55.3 or a mixture of both. It depends on what is considered to be its core business and whether the onsite and offsite functions could be effectively separated with different paypoints thereby allowing separate entries under more than one core business heading. In comparison, a company such as (External) Heathcotes that only seeks to offer an exclusive dining experience would have its employees classified under section 55.3. The (External) Barton Grange Hotel to the south of Garstang offers Hotel accommodation, restaurant, conference and function facilities and there is even a garden centre and marina on site. The 100-acre (External) Ribby Hall site offers a range of accommodation, conference, leisure and fitness activities that also exemplify the difficulties of classifying employees to particular sectors.
Other examples in section 55.2 include (External) South Lakeland Caravans Ltd based in Carnforth. The company has sites throughout the Lake District, Morecambe Bay and North Wales, whilst (External) Partingtons has, amongst other interests, three holiday parks in the Blackpool area. Both companies have multiple sites so it brings in to question the exact location where employees are registered under the Annual Business Inquiry. A firm with different locations but only one administrative paypoint will have all its employees recorded in just one local authority area that has the company headquarters. Separate paypoints would distribute the employee totals between their respective establishments.
Under normal circumstances, major retailers with multiple outlets would have their employees' paypoint allocated to their place of work, but for smaller companies with a limited number of sites, all the firm's jobs may be registered at one address. Sales staff with no fixed place of work would be registered to their head office, which may be far from their work area, whilst temporary employees registered with labour recruitment agencies would be allocated to the agency's paypoint and not to the company to whom they are currently attached. The hotels and restaurants sectors in particular, may make significant use of agency workers, but none will be allocated to the tourism sector.
For section 55.4 (Bars, public houses and nightclubs), an example in this section should be (External) Guys Thatched Hamlet near Garstang.
Section 63.3 (Travel agencies/tour operators), will include Tour operators such as the (External) Holiday Cottages Group in Earby, (External) Sunterra Europe Ltd in Lancaster and (External) Alfatravel with a site in Chorley. Another very important employer in this sector is (External) Gold Medal Travel Group plc based at Riversway Docklands. As one of the UK's leading independent travel companies, it makes an important contribution to Preston district employment levels in this sector.
Statistics are available that measure the volume and value of tourism for each Lancashire authority.
The regional statistics section of the (External) Eurostat website contains a tourism section. Information is published for arrivals, nights spent, the number of establishments, bedrooms and bed spaces. The figures are published at the European NUTS level 3 area classification: the Lancashire County Council area and the two unitary authorities of Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool. The NUTS-2 classification level presents results at the broader Lancashire level that is an amalgamation of these three areas.
Please also note that there is the visitors to tourist attractions research monitor .
There are a number of long-established and independent Lancashire businesses that will either have staff allocated to section 63.3 or have workers that could potentially be allocated to this section. A popular Travel Agency based in East Lancashire is (External) Althams Travel . This independent company was established in 1874, and continues to compete against much larger national rivals. The Tour operator (External) Travellers Choice with its headquarters in Carnforth can trace its heritage back to 1872. Companies such as (External) Fraser Eagle and (External) John Fishwick & Sons are very well established independent local businesses that amongst other things are tour operators. Since tour operator functions are not the main activities of these two companies, it is possible that these particular jobs would be allocated under other transport-related sections.
The Libraries/ Museums and Other Cultural Activities sector (92.5) incorporates the range of local museums in the county managed by the Lancashire County Museums Service .
The Sport and other recreation activities sector (92.6 and 92.7) includes employees at the professional football clubs along with swimming, golf and health clubs etc. Worth a mention in this section is the (External) Royal Lytham Golf Club . It has one of the premier links courses in the world, and over the years has brought this part of the county to the attention of an international audience by hosting Open Championships (it will be the venue for the 2012 Open), Ryder Cups and numerous other major tournaments including the Women's and Seniors Opens. It is one of four along the Fylde Coast in Lancashire that form part of (External) England's golf coast .
The significance of the tourism industry in terms of job numbers by district is illustrated in Figure 1. At the local level the estimates should be treated with some caution but the importance of the industry to Blackpool, England's most popular seaside resort and conference destination, is clearly evident. Around 10,400 employees are estimated to work in tourism-related jobs. Numerically, tourism-related employment is second highest in Preston (6,300), whilst Lancaster District, which contains the resort town of Morecambe, was in third place with 5,300 jobs.
Figure 1 Tourism-Related Employee Jobs by District, 2007Chart showing the number of tourism-related jobs in Lancashire's local authorities in 2007 - see text for details
Source
ONS - Annual Business Inquiry
Employment in the Lancashire tourism industry grew strongly throughout post-war years, expanding two and-a-half fold between the early 1950s and the early 1990s, making it one of the fastest growing areas of new job creation in the county. Expansion was particularly rapid over the 1970s and 1980s when nearly 15,000 net new jobs were created. The early 1990s recession however saw retrenchment in the industry with employee job numbers falling back both nationally and in Lancashire.
The latest set of figures for 1998 to 2007 are displayed in Table 2. In 2000, there was a substantial increase in employment levels, but anecdotal evidence suggests that this may in part have been the result of the reclassification of some employees from retail to tourist-related employment. The results do highlight volatility of the data and therefore the difficulties in measuring the total number of tourism jobs.
The percentage change figures for Lancashire in Table 2 (1998-2007) should therefore be used with caution. Of note however is the strong growth in employment in both restaurants and sport and recreation. The rise in obesity levels over recent years, and the need for people to improve their health, presents strong growth in areas associated with food and the need to stay healthy.
Another point from Table 2 is the large reduction in Travel agent/ tour operator jobs that really took effect from the beginning of the new millennium. This was the result of a large number of jobs at Airtours previously allocated to Rossendale district being reallocated outside the county. The growth of online holiday bookings probably resulted in further job losses in this sector.
Photograph of Beacon Fell Visitor Centre in Preston district
Structurally, the tourism industry is an amalgam of small independent businesses, some well-established medium-sized local independent companies and a few large multi-interest groups (see the (External) Visit Lancashire website for details of a number of tourism-related businesses in the county). The results from the Annual Business Inquiry for 2007, estimated that there were just over 5,100 Tourism Sector business units in the Lancashire NUTS-2 area representing 9.4% of the total for the county.
Tourism is an important employer of female staff, part-time and temporary workers, and is where many young people obtain their first experience of employment. In general terms however, the sector's overall image as a career choice remains at best modest with a high reliance on part-time staff. In the Lancashire NUTS-2 area, female employment in the Tourism industry accounted for 55.4% of total staff numbers and 66.6% of females worked on a part-time basis. For males, 47.7% were also employed on a part-time basis.
The industry is fairly labour intensive with new technology tending to impact on the quality of service, particularly in the travel services, rather than on labour content. Many tourism operators continue to face problems of recruiting staff and recent years has seen a significant influx of employees from new entrants to the European Union.
Whilst some tourism employers take pride in their employee policies and development programmes, staff turnover in general is liable to be high. There is often a lack of structured training, and pay and conditions often tend towards minimum levels. Such factors, together with the strong seasonal character of many tourism activities, inhibit the potential growth of the industry.
Tourism relies on consumers visiting the area to take advantage of the service therefore success depends strongly on promotion and investment in current and new projects. The local industry has shown some ability in adapting to trends and in generating new market segments such as short and weekend themed breaks, business and conference tourism along with new facilities and attractions. For example, there has been an emphasis over recent years to develop the tourism potential of Lancashire's (External) rural landscape and wildlife assets .
The industry has however, lost market share, particularly to overseas destinations and has failed to share fully in the higher spending quality conscious market. There is nevertheless some optimism about future prospects assuming plans to address weaknesses in traditional resorts are successful. For instance in (External) Blackpool there are a number of projects that will help to transform the core central area.
The tourism industry is seen as being able to play an important role both in the regeneration of those parts of the county that have seen a decline in their traditional industries and in aiding the diversification of the rural economy, particularly in addressing the problems facing upland agriculture. It also has a very important part to play in enhancing the overall image of Lancashire.
This page was compiled by Bryan Moulding .
All enquiries from the media should be sent to Corporate.Communications@lancashire.gov.uk .
Any other questions about the content of this page may be sent to EconInfo@lancashire.gov.uk .
For all enquiries about the county council's services , contact the Customer Service Centre on 0845 0530000 (01772 530000) or at Enquiries@css.lancscc.gov.uk .
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