Laker's Skytrain - The first No Frills Airline

Skytrain to America

Sir Freddie Laker pioneered the idea of cheap air travel and introduced the first ‘no-frills’ concept to aviation with his ‘Skytrain to America’ in 1977.  

This entrepreneurial venture was so ahead of its time that rival airlines conspired successfully to crush his business.

Before Skytrain, international flights were for the rich. After the Second World War it was thought that competition between airlines might lead to a dereliction of passenger safety, and so the market was strictly regulated by the International Air Transport Association.

IATA allowed state airlines to maintain a monopoly offering identical services at high prices. (By 1971 the only exception was charter airlines catering for the growing package holiday trade. Under an IATA rule intended to preserve the monopoly, charter passengers needed six months' membership of an "affinity group" whose main purpose was not travel, groups such as the Dahlia Society or the Left Hand Club – see previous post)

Laker, whose airline was being regularly fined for carrying large numbers of bogus Rose Growers to America, came up with an easier system. Passengers who wanted a cheap flight could queue for a ticket at the airport, just as they would at a railway station before taking a train. It took six years of campaigning and lobbying to persuade the British and American governments to agree to the idea.

Queuing for  Skytain tickets at Victoria

The first Skytrain took off for New York in September 1977. Laker offered no frills but at £59 it cost a third of any other ticket. He made £1 million profit in the first year, and by 1980 was carrying one in seven transatlantic passengers.

The other major airlines soon took action, offering cheap fares for the first time and when Pan Am cut the price of its regular service by two-thirds in October 1981, Laker's passengers deserted him.

And then, in February 1982, Laker Airways went into receivership with debts of £264 million. The collapse was so sudden that its flights were turned round in mid-air!  At first it seemed that Laker had overstretched, borrowing heavily to finance 15 new planes just as the pound fell against the dollar.

But in 1983 the liquidators Touche Ross began an anti-trust action in America, claiming a billion dollars from 10 major airline and the allegations went beyond predatory pricing. British Airways, Pan Am, TWA and Lufthansa were all said to have colluded to plot Laker's downfall.

In particular, several airlines had threatened the manufacturer McDonnell Douglas that they would buy elsewhere if it rescheduled Laker's debt. (The Justice Department found the evidence in a school project by the daughter of a McDonnell Douglas director!)

The action threatened BA's privatisation, and in 1985 the defendants settled out of court the £35 million owed to Laker's creditors, staff and passengers. Laker himself reluctantly accepted £6 million in compensation and retreated to the Bahamas.

Frederick Alfred Laker was born in Canterbury on August 6 1922. His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family when Freddie was five, and his mother then worked as a cleaner. At the local Simon Langton School Freddie did not shine academically but told friends he was going to be a millionaire. His first job was delivering coal for an uncle.

At 16 he joined the flying-boat builders Short Brothers of Rochester as a teaboy and apprentice engineer, and studied maths and economics at night school. In the Second World War he worked for the Air Transport Auxiliary where he excelled at improvising repairs. He became flight engineer and then qualifyed as a ferry pilot himself.

By 1946, with a loan from a friend he set up Aviation Traders, dealing in war-surplus and then carrying passengers and freight in converted Halifax bombers. Laker made his first fortune from the Berlin airlift of 1948. The government chartered every available aeroplane from the many small independent airlines at generous rates. His profit, however, came from selling spare parts to the other airlines.

When the airlift ended, Laker judged the market to be overcrowded, and, as others went under, had his team at work smelting 6,000 engines for a saucepan manufacturer. In 1951 he returned to charter, carrying troops for the Army in aircraft rebuilt from crashed ones

In 1953 his Channel Air Bridge began flying passengers, and then cars, from Southend to Calais. In 1958 he sold his business, which was merged with others to form British United Airways. He became managing director of BUA, and it grew into the largest independent airline.  

British United Airways

In 1965 he resigned, forming Laker Airways to capitalise on the booming package holiday trade. Three innovations made the airline successful:

1) Laker chartered his aircraft to tour companies at a rate that cost them less the more they flew.

2) He saved money on fuel by telling his crews to fly at higher altitudes than usual and by pioneering the reduced thrust technique on take-off.

3) He also kept his fleet busy off-season, flying winter tours to the Mediterranean and Muslims to Mecca for the Haj.

Laker enjoyed the good life. At his peak he bought a Rolls-Royce each year and racehorses for his Epsom stud. He was once photographed zooming around the Gatwick runway pretending to be a Spitfire and he was voted "Man of the Year" and in 1978 knighted by the Callaghan government.

Yet he never lost his Kentish accent and had a reputation for frugality.  Laker's management style was to dominate. He knew each aspect of his business as well as any employee, and, while inspiring great loyalty, knew his own mind and got his own way. 

Vladimir Raitz - The First Travel Pioneer

Continuing the theme of great travel entrepreneurs, let’s remember a true pioneer of the post-war package holiday industry; Vladimir Raitz.  

In the period from his first  trips to Corsica, Vladimir Raitz built the first, and one of the UK's most respected, holiday companies, Horizon Holidays, overseeing the business until the early 1970s.

Corsica for £32:10s per person and as much wine as you could put away

When Vladimir Raitz launched his business, few people could afford a foreign holiday. A return flight to Nice in 1950 for example, cost £70 (or about £1,700 today).  What Vladimir offered in 1950 was an all-inclusive package holiday to Corsica for £32 10s - including return flight, tented accommodation on the beach "delicious meat-filled meals and as much local wine as [you] could put away".

His first flight, with 11 paying customers looking forward to a week in the sun, took off from Gatwick in May 1950 in a government-surplus Dakota DC3. The plane landed at Lyon to refuel before continuing to Calvi. The whole journey took six hours.

Vladimir later recalled: "When we arrived at Corsica airport, there was nothing at all – not even a little hut. [We had] to shelter from the sun under the wings of the plane while we waited for the bus to pick us up." Once at the beach, the holiday-makers were greeted by large canvas tents, each with two beds. There was an area was set aside for "ablutions", a dining room, bar and dance-floor. "A pastis was a few pence," Raitz said, "a bottle of wine was nine pence."

His company was Horizon Holidays

Horizon Holidays..

 

Horizon soon added Majorca as a destination, followed by Sardinia, Malaga and Perpignan.  As it expanded, the firm added Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava, then a small fishing village with a handful of hotels and bars and no bank. Vladimir later regretted the over-development of that part of the Catalan coastline.

None of this was achieved without difficulty. British European Airways objected to his flying to Corsica because it constituted "material diversion of traffic" – despite the fact that they did not fly to the island. And at first he was only allowed to carry teachers and students as all other occupations were banned!

There were also strict government regulations about how much money you could take on an overseas holiday: "At first it was £50, and that was later cut to £25," he recalled. "But we could keep the price of accommodation down to about £15, and the charter flight was payable in sterling, so there was still some spending money left over."

His Early Days in Russia, Berlin and Mill Hill

Vladimir Raitz was born to Jewish middle-class family in Moscow on May 23 1922. His father was a doctor and his mother, Cecilia, a qualified dentist. In 1927 Cecilia left Moscow to join her parents, who had fled to Berlin. She took Vladimir with her and he never saw his father again.

In Berlin he saw the rise of Hitler but in 1936, Vladimir joined his Grandparents in London and went to Mill Hill School. He arrived fluent in Russian, German, Polish and French, but with no English and yet by the end of his first term he was top of the class in that subject. 

Vladimir went on to the London School of Economics, where he read History, then joined the Reuters news agency. Throughout the Second World War he interpreted foreign news broadcasts for Reuters and United Press.

He was still working for Reuters when, in 1949, his grandmother died, leaving him £3,000. He left the agency, using his windfall to establish Horizon Holidays.

He was aware that since the end of the war there had been a surplus of government aircraft which were available for charter. Most were taken up for transporting cargo but Raitz saw a different opportunity, having just been invited by another expatriate Russian to visit Corsica, where the man was running a beachside "holiday camp".

Competition Appears

Even Vladimir could not have foreseen the huge expansion in holiday travel that was to follow his Corsica experiment. Between 1960 and 1967, the number of Britons going abroad soared from 2.25 million a year to 5 million. Horizon became one of the UK's largest operators, spawning Club 18-30, which was, he claimed, simply a holiday company for young people and not as a vehicle for sun, booze and sex that it later became.

However, the company could not cope with the vicious price war that broke out in the early 1970s, sparked off mainly by the biggest operator, Clarksons. Horizon began to lose money. After a desperate struggle to keep it afloat, the final blow was dealt by the oil price crisis which followed the 1972 Arab-Israeli war. In February 1974 it was taken over by Court Line, Clarksons' parent company. Court Line itself went bust shortly afterwards, owing £7 million to some 100,000 holiday-makers.

The collapse was particularly serious because there were then no proper bonds or protection schemes to safeguard people's holidays against bankruptcy. In the wake of the event, Civil Aviation Authority bonds and the Air Travel Reserve Fund were established.

Later Reflections on the Effects of Package Travel

Vladimir admited to having mixed feelings about the consequences of modern tourism. Benidorm, he noted in 1989, "looks bloody awful now – but that's progress, I suppose". More thoughtfully, he added: "On one hand, I hate to see resorts being despoiled. Take Minorca. There used to be a beach, no road to it, you used to scramble down through the scrub. Today it is ringed with hotels. To that extent, I am sad... On the other hand, I think it's marvellous that 12 or 13 million people can have a Mediterranean holiday and enjoy themselves."

"Providing a fortnight in the Mediterranean sun to a wide segment of the British public, hereto the prerogative of well-to-do members of the bourgeoisie, brought with it what can only be described as a social revolution; the man in the street acquired a taste for wine, for foreign food, started to learn French, Spanish or Italian, made friends in the foreign lands he had visited – in fact became more 'cosmopolitan', with all that that entailed."

And Thomson too..

Vladimir remained one of the principal players in the British tour operating business for 25 years. On behalf of Sir Gordon Brunton, of the Thomson organisation, for example, he acquired Skytours and Riviera Holidays, which merged to become Thomson Holidays.

Despite the downfall of Horizon, Raitz remained in the travel industry. During the late 1970s he organised tours for the Maltese Tourist Board where I had the pleasure of working alongside him at Medallion Holidays.

Vladimir Gavrilovich Raitz, entrepreneur, born 23 May 1922; died 31 August 2010

Thomas Cook - The First Tour Operator!

Thomas Cook, was was born  in Melbourne, South Derbyshire, on 22nd November, 1808 leaving school at the age of ten to work as a gardener's boy on Lord Melbourne's estate.

The First Signs of a Travel Career

Cook attended the local Methodist Sunday School and was described as "an earnest, active, devoted, young Christian". He soon became a teacher at the Sunday School and eventually was appointed as its superintendent. At seventeen Thomas joined the local Temperance Society and over the next few years spent his spare-time campaigning against the consumption of alcohol.

In 1827 Cook abandoned his apprenticeship to become an itinerant village missionary, on a salary of £36 a year.  His job was to spread the Word by preaching, distributing tracts, and setting up Sunday schools throughout the south midland counties.  Thus began his career in travel.

Cook married in 1833 and became an active member of the local Temperance Society making speeches and publishing pamphlets pointing out the dangers of alcohol consumption. He also arranged large group picnics where participants were, according to the Temperance Messenger, sustained with "biscuits, buns and ginger beer". In 1840 Cook decided to make a career out of his temperance beliefs and founded the Children's Temperance Magazine.

The First ‘Package’ Holiday

In 1841 Cook had the idea of arranging an eleven-mile rail excursion from Leicester to a Temperance Society meeting in Loughborough on the newly extended Midland Railway. Cook charged his customers one shilling and this included the cost of the rail ticket and the food on the journey. The venture was a great success and Cook decided to start his own business running rail excursions.

He described this as ‘the starting point of a career of labour and pleasure which has expanded into … a mission of goodwill and benevolence on a grand scale’

The First ‘Brochure’

Cook set up as a bookseller and printer in Leicester. He specialized in temperance literature and opened up temperance hotels in Derby and Leicester and continued to organize excursions.  In 1845, having won a reputation as an entrepreneur who could obtain cheap rates from the railway companies for large parties, he undertook his first profit-making excursion - to Liverpool, Caernarfon, and Mount Snowdon. Cook wrote a handbook which resembled in essential respects the modern tour operator's brochure.

In 1846 Cook took 500 people from Leicester on a tour of Scotland that involved visits to Glasgow and Edinburgh. One of his greatest achievements was to arrange for over 165,000 people to attend the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. 

The First Ticketing Problems!

Cook's travel business was badly damaged in 1862 when the Scottish railway companies refused to issue any more group tickets for Cook's popular tours north of the border. Cook instead decided to take advantage of new rail links to take large numbers of tourists to the continent. In his first year he arranged for 2000 visitors to travel France and 500 to Switzerland. In 1864 Cook began taking tourists to Italy.

The First Mass-Market Backlash

Cook was charged with swamping Europe with "everything that is low-bred, vulgar and ridiculous". And others complained about the bad taste of taking tourists to the battlefields of the American Civil War.

Cook moved his business to London. His son John managed the London office of the company that was now known as Thomas Cook & Son and helped to expand the company by opening offices in Manchester, Brussels, and Cologne. In 1869 the company arranged tours of Egypt and the Holy Land, something he described as "the greatest event of my tourist life".

The First Boardroom Revolt

Thomas Cook had a difficult relationship with his son and only made him a partner in 1871. His reluctance was probably due to disputes between the two men, mainly over financial matters. Unlike Thomas, John believed that business should be kept separate from religion and philanthropy. He also upset his father by being more adventurous in investing money. He opened a hotel at Luxor and refurbished the Nile steamers of the khedive, from whom he obtained the passenger agency, thus helping to make Egypt a safer and more attractive destination.

The First Round The World Tour

By 1872 Thomas Cook & Son was able to offer a 212 day Round the World Tour for 200 guineas. The journey included a steamship across the Atlantic, a stage coach from the east to the west coast of America, a paddle steamer to Japan, and an overland journey across China and India.

Thomas continued to disagree with his son about the way the company should be run. After a serious dispute in 1878, Thomas decided to retire to Thorncroft, the large house which he had built on the outskirts of Leicester, and allow John Cook to run the business on his own.

And A Sad Ending

Cook led a lonely life after the deaths of his unmarried daughter Annie in 1880 and his wife four years later. He continued to travel, however, making his final pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1888. Much of his time and money were spent, as they had been throughout his career, in work for the Baptist church, the temperance movement, and other charities. He did not attend the firm's silver jubilee celebrations in 1891; whether this was because of blindness and physical incapacity or because  his son John did not want him there is not clear

Thomas Cook died at Knighton, Leicester, on 18th July 1892.

And the Gold medal goes to..Nike

Ambush marketing. The one thing the official sponsors were trying to avoid, with all the talk of 'brand police' at the turnstiles.  And yet, the Gold Medal of Ambush Marketing goes to Nike for their bright yellow-green running shoes.  They were one of the most prominent non-sponsors of the Olympics - and yet Nike managed to hi-jack the greatest show on earth with their amazing neon 'Volt' shoes.

Over 400 athletes wore Nike Volts in competition at the London Olympics and of those 400, 68 athletes won Olympic medals, including 25 gold medals

The man behind the Volt Shoe is Martin Lotti, Nike's global creative director for the Olympics . An industrial designer by education, he has been at Nike for 15 years. Painting Nike's Flyknit shoe Volt in that vivid way , was, he says, his way of creating a kind of "Team Nike."

Previously, the brand had matched the colour of the shoe to the color of the individual athlete's uniforms. Although the problem with that is that it blended in. This year, hundreds of athletes from different countries wore the same vivid colour

Nike used their own marketing assets (their shoes) - that belonged to them alone, and this gave this gave them a unique opportunity to take advantage of the Olympic rules.

Focus groups of amateur, college and professional athletes had been shown the shoe in different colours and, across the board, everybody loved the Volt, Lotti revealed .

There's a scientific reason for that. "It's the most-visible colour to the human eye." said Lotti.

Read the full background story here 

And for more on the running shoe itself...here

Olympic Winners and Losers

Sport has always played a large part in my life; whether it’s playing football in the park or watching Usain Bolt in the 100m final – the power of sport to engage and inspire is undeniable. (My personal favourite was the Brownlie Bros in the men’s triathalon..)

Following London 2012 there is now  a great debate on who won the marketing Olympics - which brands stood and out and which ones didn’t even make it off the starting blocks. But there is one thing that unites all brands involved - that they recognize the importance and power of sport and the passion it inspires in consumers.

So thanks to the BBC for raising the benchmark of sporting broadcasting. From their Olympic Trailer to their multi-channel coverage, the BBC where simply superb and their montages alone worthy of gold medals in editing and compilation.  And thanks also to the Royal Mail for reminding me to send a proper letter next time rather than an email.

It’s a shame then that it is unlikely Britain’s recession-hit economy will receive any boost from the Games that have been a triumph for the nation’s athletes. While Britain’s construction sector benefited hugely before the Olympics, experts have said the 17-day sporting spectacle had not delivered significant financial rewards and neither was it expected to in the months and years ahead.  Visitor numbers to London were estimated to be down 30%

In the run-up to the Olympics, commuters and tourists were warned to stay away amid fears that London’s transport system could not cope with millions of extra people descending on the capital. 

The London Olympic Games had long been heralded as a key boost to the British economy but in fact tourist numbers fell dramatically in the first few days of the Games. Hotels cut their prices and many shopping areas, restaurants, theatres, attractions and entertainment venues saw a significant reduction in business. Businesses complained of being sidelined as tourists headed only for the Games and avoided the capital’s other attractions and shopping destinations, while non-sports fans opted to stay at home or delay their trips.

Of course, we knew all of this already so why are officials now so surprised? 

http://www.fesmarketing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/london-2012-therell-be-trouble-ahead.html

Hopefully, the organisers of next Olympics in Rio will from the lessons in London….but why would they when London did not learn from the lessons of previous  Olympic cities and countries that went before them!

A Level Economics Pass or Fail?

As thousands of teenagers receive their A level grades, I am sure many of them would be able to do a better job of sorting out the economy than our present chancellor, who’s qualifications for the job include a degree not in Economics or Maths - but History..

We hear now that half of the economists who strongly supported the George Osbourne’s deficit-reduction-austerity plans are now asking for a rethink and urging the Treasury to take advantage of low borrowing costs to boost spending on infrastructure projects. 

Unlike George Osborne (and David Cameron) economists can see that the evidence now points to the need for a change of course. They know that without growth we can't get the deficit down – George Osborne is already forecast to borrow £150bn more than planned.

Output is now lower than it was when the coalition was formed two years ago while the Bank of England believes it will take until 2014 for gross domestic product to return to the peak reached in early 2008. The economy is expected to contract by 0.2% this year.

Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics, said: "If I were chancellor at this point, I would alter the plan, I would stop the cuts to public investment and I might even seek to increase it. Supply-side reform might be welcome but what we're talking about here is a shortage of demand. The key thing is to try and get the private sector to spend its money and that may require a bit of government spending to prime the pump."

What he is referring to in simple terms is ‘the multiplier effect’

The Multiplier Effect

Every time there is an injection of new demand into the economy there is likely to be a multiplier effect. This is because an injection of extra income leads to more spending, which creates more income, and so on. The multiplier effect refers to the increase in final income arising from any new injection of spending.

The size of the multiplier depends upon household’s marginal decisions to spend, called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC), or to save, called the marginal propensity to save (MPS).  This in turn is largely dependent upon economic confidence.

When income is spent, this spending becomes someone else’s income, and so on. Marginal propensities show the proportion of extra income allocated to particular activities, such as investment spending by UK firms, saving by households, and spending on imports from abroad. For example, if 80% of all new income in a given period of time is spent on UK products, the marginal propensity to consume would be 80/100, which is 0.8.

The following formula to calculate the multiplier uses marginal propensities, as follows:

1/(1-mpc)

So, if consumers spend 0.8 and save 0.2 of every £1 of extra income, the multiplier will be  

1/(1-0.8)

= 1/0.2

= 5

This means the multiplier is 5, which means that every £1 of new income generates £5 of extra income.

The multiplier concept can be used any situation where there is a new injection into an economy for example when the government funds building of a new motorway or invests in a home building programme, as has been suggested.

Of course, there is also the downward or ‘reverse’ multiplier..

A withdrawal of income from the circular flow (austerity cuts, reductions in public spending etc etc) will lead to a downward multiplier effect which will further lead to a reduction of spending and economic activity...

Or in other words, just what George has been doing for the last year.

BBC 2012 Olympic Trail

For those that missed the amazing title sequence and marketing trail for the BBC 2012 Olympics - here it is!

The animation will be used for each Olympic event, as well as being used for marketing purposes. At just over a minute long, the sequence sees athletes running through terraced streets; cyclists tackling the Scottish highlands and gymnasts somersaulting along the London bridge.

The animation was created by design agency RKCR/Y&R, who describe themselves as 'the UK's most creative agency'. 

The production was handled by Passion Pictures and Red Bee Media, with Passion Pictures also taking care of the animation. Director Pete Candeland has also worked with the likes of Coca Cola and the Gorillaz. 

A full two-minute, forty second version will be aired on BBC One on July 3rd. Sixty, Forty, Thirty and Five second versions of the titles will be used throughout the games coverage.

I would love to know how much it cost!   Any ideas?

New Breathalyzer laws in France

Going to France on holiday?  Taking the car?  Don't forget your breathalyzer?

As of yesterday (01 July), motorists and motorcyclists will face an on-the-spot fine unless they travel with two single-use breathalyser kits in their cars  (along with your compulsory warning triangle, high visibility vest and first aid kit!) as part of a government drive to reduce the number of drink-driving-related deaths 

The new law, which exclude mopeds, will also include foreign drivers from 1 November after a four-month period of grace. Anyone failing to produce a breathalyser after that date will receive an €11 fine.

French police have warned they will be carrying out random checks on drivers crossing into France via ferries and through the Channel tunnel.

The French government hopes the laws will encourage drivers who suspect they may be over the limit to test themselves, and will save around 500 lives a year.

The French government is hoping that the requirement will encourage French motorists to test themselves before driving if they have consumed any alcohol - and that using the kit will become as normal as reaching for a condom before sex, they claim.

Alcohol is responsible for almost a third of fatal car accidents on French roads, compared with one in five British and just one in ten German accidents. 

The French drink-driving limit is 50mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood – less than the UK limit of 80mg. 

Only kits bearing the letters 'NF' for 'French Norm' will be recognised by the police - so pack a couple of these into your car

G20 recognises Travel & Tourism but must try harder

So, the G20 world leaders have finally recognized the importance of travel and tourism as a driver of jobs, growth, and economic recovery.  Considering the industry will contribute around US$2 trillion in GDP and 100 million jobs to the global economy in 2012, its about time. 

When the wider economic impacts of the industry are taken into account, travel and tourism is forecast to contribute some US$6.5 trillion to the global economy and generate 260 million jobs – or 1 in 12 of all jobs on the planet!

The G20 Declaration states: "we recognize the role of travel and tourism as a vehicle for job creation, economic growth, and development, and, while recognizing the sovereign right of States to control the entry of foreign nationals, we will work towards developing travel facilitation initiatives in support of job creation, quality work, poverty reduction, and global growth.”

Meaning what, exactly?

The G20 could boost  international tourist numbers by an additional 122 million, generate an extra US$206 billion in tourism exports and create over 5 million additional jobs by 2015 just by improving visa processes and entry formalities. 

Of the 656 million international tourists who visited G20 countries in 2011, an estimated 110 million needed a visa, many of whom were deterred from traveling by the cost, waiting time, and difficulty of obtaining a visa. Facilitating visas for these tourists, many from some of the world’s fastest-growing source markets such as the BRICs, could stimulate demand, spending, and ultimately create millions of new jobs in the G20 economies.

The issue of visas has been debated for many years, the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) have conducted research that show that the Schengen area alone is missing out on close to €500m in tourism revenue due to inefficiency. In a case study 21 per cent of Indians applying for Schengen visas gave up because of delays, while the figure was even higher for the UK at 26 per cent.

On a day that the Government announces that it is scrapping GCSEs and re-introducing more 'rigorous' O-Levels back into schools - their report is 'must try harder'.

Music Tourism worth £1.4bn

Feargal Sharkey (one-time leader of the Undertones) is now CEO of UK Music, an organisation representing the collective interests of the UK’s commercial music industry. Today they published a report showing that music tourism contributes around £1.4bn to the UK economy. This represents a positive contribution of £864m (GVA) to the national economy and equivalent of 19,700 full-time jobs.

Their report shows that large-scale live music across all regions of the UK attracts at least 7.7m attendances by domestic and overseas music tourists and that although foreigners made up just 5% of music tourists in the UK, they were responsible for 18% of the spending.

The UK Music report found that iconic venues, such as the Salford Lads Club in Manchester (seen on the sleeve of The Smiths album The Queen is Dead) were attracting attention.

For some dedicated tourists, going to the Salford Lads Club or wal;king on the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing, is just as important as a visit to Buckingham Palace and Stonehenge!

From these findings UK Music has issued a list of recommendations to Government – including the implementation of a national live music tourism strategy, with the immediate goal of increasing the number of overseas music tourists.

The research, undertaken by Bournemouth University’s International Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Research, follows the Government’s Plan For Growth, published alongside the Budget. This specifically identified the UK’s creative industries and tourism amongst sectors with the greatest potential to drive economic growth.

Research leader, Professor Adam Blake said: “This is the first time that a comprehensive study of music tourism has ever been undertaken in the UK. The data on where music-goers come from confirms that large numbers of them do travel around the country to go to music events, and significant numbers come from overseas. However, it is important to note that our definition of a music tourist is hugely conservative, and that we did not analyse the vast numbers of non-ticketed or smaller capacity events. Subsequently, the true value of music to UK tourism will be much higher.”

A word of caution however, after 10 years of growth, the live music industry stuttered last year, there was a drop of 6.7% in UK live music revenues. The sector's revenues rose by 9.4% in 2009 and 13% in 2008.

Down load the full report here