Barbecue summer prompts autumn break rush

Many Brits are postponing their summer holidays until the autumn because they don"t want to miss sunny weather at home, according to a travel agent website.

Sunshine.co.uk noticed that bookings for the autumn period this year were up by 21% on last year and decided to conduct a survey to find out why.

The results of a 1092-person poll showed that optimism about the hot UK summer was the second main reason for booking in the autumn after cheaper prices.

The site asked respondents "Are you holidaying later than normal this year, for example in autumn or winter, instead of summer?" Some 56% of respondents said they were.

The reasons broke down as follows:

Cheaper holidays later in the year: 42%
Expecting UK summer to be hot: 37%
Due to work (e.g. holiday availability): 21%
No particular reason: 19%
Have longer to save up money: 8%
Other: 5%

Co-founder of sunshine.co.uk Chris Brown said: "We recently found that many people had brought forward their summer holiday to Easter, in order to make the most of all the Banks Holidays. Now that Easter is out the way, we wanted to find out if anyone was putting off their summer holiday until later in the year.

"The recent bout of warm weather here in the UK has obviously made many people optimistic about the impending British summertime and many want to stick around to make the most of the good weather. However, we"d strongly advise against moving holiday plans just on the off chance it might be sunny in the UK, because we all know only too well how disappointing British weather can be."

by Dinah Hatch

Thursday, May 26, 2011