More than two in five Brits have cancelled a summer trip this year because of cost

When people start cancelling holidays, they're telling you something the official numbers won't. A summer trip is usually the last thing families give up, not the first. So when more than two in five are cutting back, that isn't belt tightening it's the belt running out of holes. Wages haven't kept pace with the cost of the essentials. It is no surprise that food, rent and energy, the things you can't opt out of, have quietly eaten the money that used to pay for the things people look forward to. And yes, it shows up right across the economy. The first thing to disappear in a squeeze is the thing people look forward to. When feeding the family is winning the argument against a break away, the cost of living has stopped being a headline and started being a household.

Families are cutting back on holidays because the weekly shop, energy bills and housing costs are eating the money that used to pay for a break. A summer trip is often the first thing to go when household budgets are stretched, because you cannot postpone the rent, the mortgage or the food bill. We are seeing a broader ‘downgrade economy’ take hold- shorter breaks, cheaper accommodation, fewer meals out and more day trips close to home. That matters beyond the family budget, because travel, hospitality and retail all depend on discretionary spending. When households are forced to choose between a holiday and groceries, the pain does not stay at the kitchen table- it ripples through high streets, seaside towns and small businesses across the country.

Over two in five Brits are cutting summer holidays as grocery bills eat into discretionary spending. Saving on a getaway has become a defensive move, with holiday funds redirected straight into the weekly shop. Families are hit hardest: a quarter have no trips booked, and low-income parents face extra pressure once subsidised school meals end. Beyond cost, the EU's new Entry/Exit System with facial scans and fingerprints at the border has triggered major queues, turning travel into an ordeal. The self-employed face their own squeeze: under Making Tax Digital, sole traders earning over £50,000 must now report quarterly, complicating cashflow just as tourist spend dries up. When 40% of travel-savers divert cash into groceries, it signals a shift from "experience" spending back to basic staples, bad news for apparel, home goods and leisure retail. The cutbacks are really a symptom: households managing balance sheets to absorb structural price rises.

In other news, Snow is White! Are we seriously suprised by this news? With Starmer, Reeves and now Burnham running the show, ythe UK have not seen a trio of thieves like these since Bruce Reynolds, Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards commiting the Great Train Robbery. Good, Hardworking UK citizens are sacrificing holidays with their families because the government have got it all wrong. I expect to see suicide rates increase due to the mental stress of not having a holiday coinciding with the ever increasing cost of living, i doubt the people in power will want to take credit for those figures. The quicker the current government are out of office, the quicker we can have a government in that cares about our economy and the people that get up to go to work, the people on benefits only will all still be on holiday this summer!

People are not cutting back because holidays suddenly matter less; they are cutting back because everyday life is swallowing the money first. When food, rent, mortgages and household bills keep rising, the summer break becomes the easiest expense to shrink, postpone or cancel.

I am seeing families become far more deliberate: shorter stays, driving instead of flying, choosing self-catering, staying with relatives or replacing a week away with a few local days out. The problem is that this caution does not stop at travel. When households pull back, hotels, restaurants, retailers, attractions and local businesses all feel it.

This is the wider economic danger. People are still spending, but more of their income is being absorbed by essentials rather than circulating through the wider economy. A cancelled holiday is not just one family spending less; it is lost revenue across an entire chain of businesses.

Holidays are usually the first casualty when household budgets tighten - or, at the very least, they undergo a painful downgrade. A fortnight in the sun is discretionary; the mortgage and the weekly shop are not.

What makes these figures so striking is that they come after inflation has supposedly been tamed. But prices haven't fallen; they are simply rising more slowly, while higher taxes and housing costs have added to the squeeze on family finances.

We see that caution across the economy: consumers trading down, delaying big purchases and rebuilding savings buffers rather than spending. That may be rational for individual households, but collectively it acts as a handbrake on growth. When even the great British getaway is being rationed to pay for the weekly shop, policymakers should take note. Sunshine, it seems, is now a luxury good.

Britain's cost of living crisis is forcing many families to rethink their summer holidays. Rising food bills, higher fuel prices and increasing travel costs are squeezing household budgets harder than ever. It's no longer just the cost of filling the family car. Higher fuel prices also push up airline costs, while UK staycations have become increasingly expensive. Even more painful if you are parents tied to school holidays, inflated peak-season prices make travelling even more unaffordable, the cost of a holiday for a family of four requiring a loan or an inheritance to make it affordasble. The impact reaches beyond family finances. As households divert holiday budgets towards groceries, rent and mortgage payments, the tourism and hospitality sectors also feel the strain. For many families, a summer break has become another casualty of Britain's ongoing cost of living crisis.

The number that tells the real story is not the 44 per cent who have cancelled or cut back a trip. It is where that money went: 40 per cent to the weekly food shop, and one in five to rent or the mortgage. People are not banking the holiday money, they are moving it to cover essentials. A holiday is the most visible discretionary spend a household has, so it is the first to go when the gap between take-home pay and fixed bills tightens, and that gap is squeezed from both ends: the price of essentials, and frozen tax thresholds that shrink the value of every pay rise. We act for hundreds of small businesses, and the softening shows in their books before any survey: quieter bookings, smaller baskets, customers trading down. This is an economy-wide problem, not a household one. A cancelled holiday is a lost month for the seaside café, the B&B and the online seller whose year turns on summer. One family's saving is another small firm's shortfall.