In message , at 11:42:22 on Sat, 31 Mar
2012, Graham Nye remarked:
ABTA's report said:

"Escaping the crowds

Clearly we are not all sports lovers, 12% of Brits say they are
intending to go abroad specifically to avoid the Games and 9% are
looking to go on holiday somewhere in the UK free from Olympics fever.
The older generation appears to be the least keen on staying in the UK;
with 22% of the over 65s intending to head overseas to avoid the Games
and 18% of 55-64 year olds.

OK, so now we can identify the report as being the one at:
http://www.abta.com/resources/news/view/464
though really it's up to you to state your source, not for us to have
to find it.

As an issue of Netiquette, if everyone stated their sources, Usenet
would look like Wikipedia, and it doesn't. But where something is a
direct quote, Google will find it immediately.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, over a quarter (28%) of Londoners are
considering changing their holiday plans due to the Olympics. Nearly 50%
say they will take time off throughout the games and 77% say they will
be staying in the Capital during the two weeks.

Do such figures have any credibility whatsoever?

Have you ever been involved in market research? They don't just pull
numbers out of a hat.

They might as well for some of the results they get. This seems
particularly likely if the "research" has been commissioned just
to provide an excuse for a press release and hence some free
publicity or if the questions given to the MR firm dictate what
answers are acceptable (as with the drinking survey Arthur saw not
permitting a choice of real ale).

This is a typical bit of Usenet nonsense, where people are too inclined
to rubbish the efforts of other professionals, while claiming their own
activities are a tour de force that's beyond reproach from mere
amateurs.

Nor would they claim that a figure like "22%" is
accurate between 21.9% and 22.1%, but 22% is an awful lot of people
(about 15 million) and needs to be taken seriously.

The 22% figure relates to over-65s.

Yes, a silly mistake. I should have used the "12% figure". (That's still
more than the entire population of London).

Another characteristic is the odd non-sequitur that gets thrown
in. 40% of people taking time off during the games, eh? Wouldn't
have anything to do with the games occurring during the main
holiday season, would it?

I did wonder about that myself, but would 40% of the population take a
holiday during a normal mid-August? Seems very high, looking around the
places I've worked in the past (and we know people without schoolkids
try to avoid August because of the prices).

I'm quite happy to accept that the 40% *includes* the 12% and the 9%.

And that when they say "time off" they mean "annual vacation", not rest-
days, weekends and so on.

The EU have done some statistics which say that (taking the population
aged over 15) about 57% of Brits take a holiday in any one year (2008),
with 29% exclusively going abroad, 20% exclusively staying in the UK and
8.7% doing a bit of both.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cac...-10-010/EN/KS-
RA-10-010-EN.PDF

Of course "taking time off", and "going on a holiday" aren't the same
thing.
--
Roland Perry