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At your Leisure - 05 December 2005

A Sector For All Seasons?

A gardener

At the time of writing, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness has passed rather abruptly into one of freezing fogs and blizzards. How do your leisure pursuits change when the seasons turn? This question has interested people in the leisure industry for years, spurring thoughts such as these:

  • What can be done about the seasonality that affects the leisure industry?
  • How can our organisation cope with high demand in the summer months and the quiet months of winter?
  • How do we hang on to our best staff during the slowdown period?
  • Can we extend the high season for our own products and services?

Many in the leisure industry would dearly love to be able to spread out the good times over the whole year, with an even and reliable flow of business, no matter what the season. Others believe that it is natural for leisure to have a seasonal aspect. In some leisure sectors it is even a good idea to have 'down time', to allow landscapes to lie dormant and recover in time for the new season.

Image: Can gardening as a leisure activity be extended beyond the traditional spring/summer months? Copyright: Manny Protester

Case Study 1: Advantage West Midlands

Anne Hathaway's Cottage.

Shakespeare's wife's pre-marital home, near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. © Leslie Watts, Stock.Xchng

Advantage West Midlands(http://www.advantagewm.co.uk/who-we-are.html), the Regional Development Agency (RDA) for that part of England, produced a plan for maximising the contribution that ten key business clusters can make to the regional economy. One of these clusters is Tourism and Leisure. They use data to show the importance of the cluster to the area's economy. Here's a summary of what they have to say:

  • In 2002 there were 13.5 million domestic and overseas overnight visits to the West Midlands.
  • These visits generated over £2 billion.
  • Day visitor trips to and within the region are estimated to have generated a further £4 billion.
  • Advantage West Midlands Tourism and Leisure Skills Study indicates that 303,000 people are employed in tourism and leisure within the West Midlands.
  • There are 28,202 tourism and leisure related businesses within the West Midlands (15% of all business within the region).
  • The biggest concentration of people working in West Midlands attractions is in entertainment and leisure parks.

They produced the following table showing the most popular paying attractions in the region:

Visits to attractions in 2002 (charged admission)

AttractionNumber of visitors
Alton Towers2,500,000
Drayton Manor1,103,700
Cadbury World534,677
Ironbridge Gorge Museum513,166
Shakespeare's Birthplace373,654
Black Country Living Museum240,000
Severn Valley Railway236,665
Hatton Farm Park190,446
Thinktank190,000
Anne Hathaway's Cottage176,970

Source: Cluster business needs analysis - tourism & leisure [Word doc, 136 KB] (http://www.advantagewm.co.uk/downloads/tourism-and-leisure-needs-analysis.doc)

Questions

  1. Which of these attractions do you think are best placed to withstand the effects of seasonality on their visitor numbers? Justify your answers.
  2. What would you say are the three most important factors in cutting the seasonality impact on these attractions? Hint: This means you need to think about how the attractions can boost their appeal to visitors, even in the 'low' season.
  3. Select one of the above attractions which would benefit from a low season with fewer visitors. Why is this so?

Case Study 2: Mulcocks' Gardening eStores

The Mulcock family run a set of businesses, their Gardening eStores(http://www.actinic.co.uk/examples/cs_class-leisure.htm), which are active in selling leisure products ranging from play equipment, to lawn mowers and trampolines. The firm found that sales of its outdoor products fell during autumn and winter. This was no surprise, but the business owners thought that they could sustain sales throughout the year for some of their products. They tried to boost sales by tackling the seasonal demand for leisure goods by setting up a niche Web site to generate online sales of its range of trampolines.

Questions

  1. List the leisure products on sale through the firm's original Web site.
  2. Pick three and think of ways in which their seasonality could be extended.
  3. How would you measure the success or otherwise of the niche Web site to the Mulcock's business?
  4. Comment on why you think this new site was either a success or a failure.

Case Study 3: Business Tourism Partnership

The Business Tourism Partnership(http://www.businesstourismpartnership.com/index.html) is a public-private grouping of organisations whose main activities centre on this sector of the leisure and tourism industry. They point to the vital role played by business tourism in the overall economy, pointing to the following data in a recent report:

  • Business tourism generates more than £20 billion in terms of its wider impact
  • It comprises the following elements:
    • Conferences and meetings
    • Exhibitions and trade fairs
    • Incentive travel
    • Corporate events
    • Outdoor events
  • These elements are known collectively as 'discretionary business tourism'
  • Non-discretionary business tourism includes individual business and corporate travel
  • In the past ten years business trips have grown by more than 50%
  • Business tourism is responsible (directly or indirectly) for more than 500,000 year-round jobs

Source: Business tourism leads the way - Business Tourism Partnership report, July 2005 [PDF, 49 KB] (http://www.businesstourismpartnership.com/pubs/Tony%20Rogers.pdf)

Delegates at a business conference

Business conferences provide a good opportunity for people to make new contacts. © iStock.com

Questions

  1. Why do you think that business tourism is important in reducing the impact of seasonality on the leisure industry?
  2. How can other parts of the leisure sector benefit from increased business tourism?

Activity

On a blank sheet of paper, draw a table with three columns with the headings: Rise, Not Sure, Fall. Take the leisure activities listed below and decide which category they would fall into, i.e. whether an activity is on the rise, on the fall or you may not be too sure.

  • Indoor sports such as five-a-side football
  • Running/jogging
  • Video/DVD rentals
  • DIY
  • Holiday planning
  • Gardening
  • Visiting/joining gym
  • Walking
  • Skiing
  • Cycling
  • Reading
  • Outdoor activity centres
  • Dining at home
  • Outdoor sports
  • Evening classes
  • Outdoor concerts
  • Home/handicrafts
  • Festivals
  • Home computing
  • Street markets
  • Video gaming
  • Swimming pool visits
  • Shopping complex visits
  • Country park visits
  • Cinema visits
  1. Complete your table. Some of these activities and leisure interests may fit into either of the two categories. List as many of them as you can and be prepared to justify your answers.
  2. Pick three of the activities and think of ways in which the peak season for participation in the activity could be extended. Are there any of the three that you would recommend having an 'off-season'?
  3. Why would you make this recommendation?