Channel opportunities alone are not likely to be sufficient to guarantee a high level of
hotel occupancy and that the area is too far from London and the M25 to be seen as an
attractive location for other sorts of hotel business.
The evidence on employment in Kent presents a slightly more positive picture. Figure
10 shows that employment in SIC55 (Hotels and Restaurants) has increased
significantly in all four Districts in the Channel Corridor since 1991 with especially
vigorous growth since 1998 (Ashford up 86%, Dover 58%, Maidstone 47%, and
Shepway 34%). Regional and national figures for the same time periods which
showed much less marked increases in SIC55 employment between 1998 and 2001
(8% and 6% respectively), although the Ashford figure may be affected by population
growth of 12.3% occasioned by rapid expansion in housing from 1991-2001.
—*—Ashford
— D- — Dover
—■--Maidstone
s Shepway
Figure 10: SIC 55 - Hotels & Restaurants Employment (1991 - 2001)
Source: NOMIS
Tourism would also affect the development of the retail sector in Kent. Increased
volumes of tourism traffic would lead to retail spending and that some retail activities
might attract cross Channel trips if the quality or price of goods offered in Kent was
seen to be attractive, but it was recognised that Kent retail spending might also leak to
the near continent if the quality and prices there were seen to be more attractive. Price
differentials are affected not just by efficiency and quality, but also by differences in
tax regimes between France and Belgium and the United Kingdom and changes in
currency exchange rates between the pound and the Franc (to December 2001) and
between the pound and the Euro (from January 2002). Sterling fell against the Euro
from a rate of around 1.3 in 1994 to a low of 1.15 in 1996 before strengthening
rapidly to a high of 1.63 in 2002. It remains at around 1.5. This makes French prices
attractive to UK residents and UK prices unattractive to Eurozone residents.
The Transmanche Tourism Research Programme records some 4.455 million day trips
in 1999 from the UK resulting in an estimated £350 million expenditure on shopping
in Nord Pas de Calais. In the same year some 680,000 staying trips to Nord Pas de
Calais resulted in an estimated £54 million of shopping expenditure. Some 38% of
travellers saw shopping as their main purpose of the trip and 96% reported shopping
activity during the trip. This suggests that in that year about £110 million of shopping
16