Band 8 model answer

An increasing number of people are choosing to spend their holidays within their own country rather than venturing abroad. This essay will explore why this is happening and argue that, despite a modest drawback, it is a largely positive trend.

Several reasons explain the rise of the domestic holiday. The most obvious is cost: once international airfares, accommodation and currency exchange are totted up, a break at home is frequently far cheaper, an increasingly important consideration as the cost of living climbs. Convenience plays its part too, since staying local spares travellers the exhaustion of long-haul flights, the tedium of visa formalities and the friction of language barriers. A growing environmental conscience also weighs in the balance, as many people, keenly aware of the heavy carbon footprint of aviation, deliberately resolve to holiday closer to home.

In my view, this shift is mostly to be welcomed. Domestic tourism keeps money circulating within the national economy, sustaining local hotels, restaurants and attractions and generating employment in regions that sorely need it. It also nudges people into appreciating the landscapes and heritage on their own doorstep, which are too readily overlooked in the scramble to travel far afield, and it spares the planet a considerable volume of needless flying.

There is, admittedly, a modest cost. International travel broadens the mind by immersing people in unfamiliar cultures, and a wholesale retreat into domestic holidays could narrow that horizon over time. On balance, however, the economic and environmental benefits seem to me comfortably to outweigh this single loss.

In conclusion, people increasingly holiday at home for reasons of cost, convenience and conscience, and while something is undeniably lost when we cease to travel abroad, I believe the trend is, overall, a positive one.