The poverty trap behind Britain’s seaside tourism economy

As another holiday season begins, Britain’s coastal towns prepare once again for the annual influx of visitors. Hotels reopen fully, attractions extend their hours, caravan parks fill up and hospitality businesses race to recruit. I know these communities well because I grew up in them: east Norfolk, west Cornwall. Places where tourism is not just part of the economy; it is the economy.

These places are beautiful, resilient and deeply important to Britain’s tourism identity. They create memories for millions of families every year and provide affordable holidays at a time when households are under immense financial pressure.

Hospitality operators in these regions are also under pressure themselves, battling rising costs, labour shortages and seasonal peaks that stretch already fragile business models. But behind the postcards and summer trade is a quieter reality that rarely gets discussed honestly enough: precarious employment has become deeply normalised, and, in some communities, it is creating a poverty trap.

This is not an attack on any sub-sector, nor a simplistic criticism of seasonal work itself. Tourism will always require flexibility, especially as England’s strict school attendance rules intensifies the pressure on seaside economies. For operators, that creates enormous pressure, compressing huge portions of annual tourism demand into extremely short periods. For operators, that creates enormous pressure.

What is described as “seasonal work” increasingly no longer reflects short, clearly defined tourism seasons. In many destinations, the season has steadily expanded. Shoulder periods are longer, yet employment structures in some businesses have not evolved alongside this reality. Instead, workers can become trapped in rolling seasonal arrangements that continue year after year, often separated only by the smallest legally permissible break before restarting again. In practice, many people are effectively permanent workers without the security, protections or financial stability permanent employment is supposed to provide.

Managers themselves are often caught in the middle, trying to navigate difficult economics, retain teams they know they will need again in weeks and balance labour costs against narrow margins. I have spoken to managers openly frustrated by the constant “game” they feel forced to play; retaining people informally, managing contract gaps and squeezing maintenance and operational resets into ever shorter off-seasons.

The issue is not that seasonality exists. The issue is that in some parts of the sector, permanent insecurity has become disguised as seasonality. At the same time, zero-hour contracts continue to underpin large parts of this workforce.

For some people, flexibility genuinely works, but for many others, particularly in communities with limited alternative employment and where childcare itself often becomes harder during extended seasonal trading periods, flexibility quickly becomes instability. When income is unpredictable, power dynamics shift. Hours become currency. Consistency becomes a reward mechanism. The ability to challenge poor practice disappears.

I have seen people “promoted” without pay rises and instead rewarded with more reliable hours. In insecure labour environments, consistency itself becomes valuable enough to accept in place of financial progression. When entire local economies revolve around a handful of dominant employers, people quickly learn not to rock the boat.

That creates cultures where workers feel unable to speak openly about poor conditions or management practices. These are often marginal communities, economically dependent on tourism and not central to national political conversations, and many of these issues remain largely invisible. Several members of my own family have been trapped inside this cycle. My brother regularly works three jobs through the summer simply to secure something resembling full-time income. At best, this is survival. And yet the reality is nuanced because many operators themselves are under enormous pressure.

Holiday parks, family attractions and budget hospitality businesses are not sitting on vast margins. Many are investing heavily in guest experience while absorbing inflation, labour costs, utilities, insurance and maintenance increases.

But commercial pressure cannot become justification for normalising insecure livelihoods. Affordable holidays cannot be subsidised through unstable work and permanent financial anxiety. A recent visit to Lisbon brought this even more sharply into focus. I met with a former Portuguese government minister who held cabinet roles across labour and tourism.

Portugal faces many of the same tensions as Britain. Tourism is economically critical, hospitality underpins entire regions and labour flexibility is essential to how the sector operates. But she spoke candidly about the risks of allowing flexibility to evolve without sufficient safeguards in economies heavily dependent on tourism employment.

Portugal and Spain have grappled with this for years, historically drawing clearer distinctions between temporary seasonal demand and permanent operational need. Spain’s recent labour reforms are particularly notable, strengthening fixed-discontinuous contracts and more stable forms of seasonal employment. The principle was simple: seasonal demand should not mean disposable workers.

The result is greater continuity between employers and employees across seasons, helping retain skills, improve stability and reduce some of the insecurity embedded within tourism economies.

Britain is beginning to move in this direction through wider conversations around workers’ rights, predictable scheduling and guaranteed hours. But hospitality operators are also rightfully nervous about additional cost pressures landing on a sector already under strain. That is why this conversation needs to move beyond simplistic binaries of “pro-worker” versus “pro-business”. Hospitality does need flexibility, but there is a difference between flexibility and fragility.

The challenge now is whether the industry and government can work together to build labour models that preserve operational flexibility while reducing the systemic insecurity normalised across parts of Britain’s seaside tourism economy. Seasonal work should not mean seasonal poverty.