Development of the leisure and recreation industry

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Unit 1 Leisure & Recreation


Development of the leisure and recreation industry

Increase in leisure time available for many individuals        .

Increase in disposable income                                .

Improved mobility                                                .

Demographic Changes                                        .

Technological developments                                        .                

Government legislation                                        .

Changing fashion, changing trends                                .

Summary                                                        .

Significance of the Leisure and recreation industry

        Consumer spending in the UK                                .

        Employment statistics                                         .

        Participation trends                                                .

        Culture and social significance                                .

        Summary                                                        .

Structure of the Leisure and Recreation industry

        Public sector        

Central government                                        .

Department of culture, media and sport                .

Sports councils                                        .

English heritage                                        .

Local authorities                                        .

List of leisure facilities                        .

Mission statement                                .

Funding                                        .

        Private sector                                                        .

                Partnerships                                                .

                Private limited companies                                .

                Public limited companies                                .

                Co – operatives                                        .

        Voluntary sector                                                .

Components of the Leisure and Recreation industry

        Arts and entertainment                                        .

        Sports and physical recreation                                .

        Heritage                                                        .

        Catering                                                        .

        Countryside recreation                                        .

        Home based leisure                                                .

Range of Employment opportunities in leisure and recreation

        Arts and entertainment                                        .

        Sports and physical recreation                                .

        Heritage                                                        .

        Catering                                                        .

        Countryside recreation                                        .

        Home based leisure                                                .

        Nature of employment                                        .

        My chosen job description                                        .

        Curriculum Vitae to match job description                        .

        Bibliography                                                        .


Development of the Leisure and Recreation industry

The rapid growth of the leisure and recreation industry from 1960 through to 1990 is due to a mixture of many items that complimented each other, they are identified as:

  1. Increase in leisure time available for many individuals
  2. Increase in disposable income
  3. Improved mobility
  4. Demographic Changes
  5. Technological developments
  6. Government legislation
  7. Changing fashion, changing trends

These helped structure the rapid growth of the leisure and recreation industry, the key factors in this, were the increase in leisure time and increase in disposable income. Through this unit I will be showing this and proving that the growth of the British leisure and recreational industry was a combination of all these factors, in the summary I will conclude this and say how everything is inter-related

1. Increase in leisure time available for many individual.

To look at the increase of leisure time one will first need to see how the average person spends their day.   Given here are 2 statistics of average persons, the first average person is from 1971 and the second person is from 1996.

From this diagram it can be seen that in 1971 the average person spent 29.2% of their time in leisure activities, this directly means 7.06 hours a day can be used for leisure activities, and 9.8% of the day in relation to employment, directly meaning 2.35 hours a day on average (obviously people work more than this but statistics have reached this figure).

From this diagram it can be seen that in 1996 the average person spent 30.6% of their time in leisure activities, this directly means 7.34 hours a day can be used for leisure activities, and 8.4% of the day in relation to employment, directly meaning 2.01 hours a day on average (obviously people work more than this but statistics have reached this figure).

From the two charts above it can be worked out that the average possible free time has risen by almost 28 minutes per day since 1971, this is due to working time being reduced. The reduction in working times and increase in leisure time can be a direct result of the legislation that tells employers how long they can work the employees for, though through time workers have shortened the working times slightly but constantly. Another major fact about the increase of leisure time is that employers are now required to give holidays to their employees and some paid holidays, this is apart from those on sickness leave.  

In 1992 the average male would have up to 51.4 hours a week that could be used as leisure time and female would have 41.6 hours.

Leisure time has increased for adults and decreased for children,  this change in the distribution of free time is a result of many demographic and socio-economic factors.

This chart below will show how the leisure time has been distributed

This chart is from the LIRC Leisure Forecasts

As we can see from the previous page the leisure time has been changed for most people, leisure time has increased and for some groups as it has decreased for others. The noticeable trend is that overall there is an increase in the participation. Due to these contributory factors the leisure industry is ever growing.

2. Increase in disposable income

The average person is able to save more money hence increasing their spending power.  This extra spending power comes from income not being used for other essential uses, this is called a “Disposable Income”. Also due to legislation there are now minimum wage rules and regulations, along with certain sick, pregnancy or parental benefits, so overall income has increased since 1971, this is not to say that people are richer, the following way are used to save on some money and subsequently can lead to people becoming slightly richer:

Money can be saved on bills if usage is reduced or bill paid early, so to not incurring any or as many interest or penalty charges.  This can be done in the following way:

Electricity        :        Spare lights in houses can be switched off.

Mortgage        :        Amount paid off

These methods are widely used and have been running very successfully throughout the UK and world, the money that is left over would be classed as spare or disposable income, disposable income is money that is not set out for any purpose but spare, so it can be used for a source of leisure or recreational use such as going to the gym or the cinema.

Disposable income is used in numerous ways from saving money for retirement, to buying holiday homes to travel in. as disposable income differs from home to home, it is difficult to specify which areas or groups have more or less, though it is not difficult to see that some people have never seen disposable income and some people are ‘full of it’. Focus here is on the amount of Disposable Income used in the leisure and recreation industry, there are two types of disposable incomes;

  1. where a person earns more than that they spend on bills, it is called personal disposable income.
  2. where a household unit earns more than their expenditure on bills it is called household disposable income.

The average household spends a total of £51.60 per week on leisure and recreation goods out of a total of £313.70.   This accounts for over 16% of the average household expense, the figure was initially extracted from the Leisure and Recreation book but have been backed up by the chart below:

This chart I retrieved from the ONS website shows clearly the rise in household disposable income.

This graph show that the index base is 100 in 1971 and that it has grown to 190 in 1997 and to 227 in 2002.

The rise in household income has been averaged but by looking at the ONS Social trends 34:2004 document I can see that the household income can be distributed highly, the closer we get to London the household disposable income increases and in Ireland the household income is lower.

Drawing an average figure for the disposable income is good for statistics but for my research I have shown that the levels of disposable differ for different areas in the UK.

Above I have explained why the levels of disposable income have been increased and identified the level of expenditure, I will now demonstrate my thorough understanding of this. Consumer spending was identified as being worth £110,000,000,000. the figure is derived from for sections of this industry they are Neighbourhood Leisure, Holiday and Tourism, Home Based Leisure and Out door Leisure.

The identified industries are just one example of how consumer spending is promoted, however promoting leisure activities is a responsibility carried out by almost 30% of local authorities, this is due to the fact that around £1,000,000,000 is spent annually on management of parks and open sites, and £492,000,000 of the £1 billion pound is cashed in by local merchants due to the CCT (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) rule.

Some of the care of councils across Britain extends to the following organisations, as there are many of them in Britain:

  • 1300 Sports and Leisure centres
  • 250 Sports halls
  • 1700 Private Health clubs
  • 70 Leisure pools

though the numbers look insignificant in the scale of ‘nationwide’ but looking at the following statistics it will come into prospective, there are only 500,000,000 visits in total to leisure centres annually, only 10% of people use leisure centres regularly and over half of the British population never use a leisure centre. This can definitely be a cause for concern for people in the medical profession.

Leisure and tourism in not purely attached to spots and leisure centres alone it also houses many other sections such as tourism and the like. Tourism attracts lots of money through the services they offer, at present the British government are backing plans by tourism experts to promote inland tourists destinations, due to the fact that the British tourism market has taken a knock due to cheap and effective air travel offered in this day and age.

3. Improved Mobility

Since the 1970’s mobility has increased, this is as a result of the improved transport systems and mass production of private vehicles. The transport systems can range from Trains through to aeroplanes. All modes of transport have become slightly more affordable in relation to earnings and new technology allows them to more comfortable and appealing. Safety is an issue that is extremely important at this stage as sometimes comfort becomes an obstacle for safety as was in car seatbelts, in 1999 it was reported that a car manufacturer managed to eliminate the ticking sound that comes from seatbelts, though this was an achievement in comfort it made a detrimental impact on the safety as in certain conditions the safety lock in the belt tensioning mechanism failed to work, hurling the passenger foreword in an accident. This was seen in Top Gear, the DSA approved cars for driving tests specifications and the national news. However, car ownership has despite some discomfort and many comforts increased, as can be seen below:

It is clear that vehicle ownership has risen by 24% since 1970.  It is now so common that some 70% of households have access to at least one vehicle and 20% of households have access to 2 or more. Having one car means that the family are on the way to being mobile independently, the implications of this are that the household can travel easily and at there own pace. The benefits to the leisure and recreational industry comes when cars are used to travel to and from places such as leisure centres, parks, museums and other significant sites that create an income for this industry. This is a direct benefit, an indirect benefit is in a scenario where say a person is spending a lot of money in public transport where if they had a car they could save money, this would result in that person saving money and therefore have an increase in the disposable income, however depriving another industry of fund. So looking at the chart above and knowing that if I were to travel today from Margate to London in a train it may cost me in excess of £25, an then I work out that if I were to make the same journey by car it may only cost me a little more that £5. this working has definitely been an influential factor in people buying cars.

Other ways of mobility are public transport Busses, Trains, Taxi’s, Minicabs, Trams and obtaining lifts from colleagues for everyday journeys.  Since 70’s these methods of transport have become better, cheaper and readily available. In this present day it can be seen that the government is promoting these modes of transport due to the fact that car ownership and use has increased and is causing congestion on the roads, though this is not the issue the issue is the effect it is having on the environment, this is the heading it is sometimes associated with. To promote these methods national and local government offices are working together to introduce systems such as ‘park and ride’, as can be seen in Canterbury and ‘congestion charges’ as can be seen in central London.

Despite these attempts to promote the British (Privatised) Transport system car sales a are due to increase still, according to the City mutual website these are due to rise to levels almost as high as 50 % of people will have cars by the year 2020 and 60% of people will have access to cars by the year of 2030.

4. Demographic Changes

“Demographic” comes from demography, this is the study of the population birth, death and age range. This meaning was derived from the dictionary online.

Demographic changes have a great role to play in leisure and recreation industry.  This is because different groups associate with different leisure activities. Due to advancements in medical science since 1970 and the aspiration from people to live healthier lives has resulted in the average life span to increase, along with higher birth rates, has resulted in a boost of the national population.

The general rise has occurred in retirees, as at the age of 65 a person can retire, and the average life expectancy is approximately 70 years, this gives the average retiree 5 years of retirement, this time is usually spent is spent doing things that gives the retiree pleasure, this can be in any shape and form and is generally spent in leisure and recreational uses. So here I have identified one of the reason to which there is an increase in participation of leisure and recreation services, another source of higher participation are young adults, ageing from around 16-30, as in this day and age the trend is to have children later on in life once settled financially, where in previous times families were well on their way by the time the parents were 25. so identifying people with less burdens means that they are likely to have spare time, this can be used in leisure and recreation.

Join now!

The 5 leisure and recreation facilities are listed hereunder:

  • Dreamland Cinema
  • Bugsy’s Bowling Centre
  • Planet Laser
  • Lido Snooker Club
  • Pool Land Club

Initially let us begin with a breakdown of the demographic changes from several Mintel reports

Source National Statistics Website

These statistics were retrieved from the ONS website. The figure are meant to be true for the time they were taken and may not be true figures today. Though the percentages will be roughly correct.

I think that Dreamland fun park targets teenagers. Since this audience has spare time and ...

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