Getaway Express

Getaway Express: day trips and short breaks

This free game is part of our Cambridge iGCSE Travel & Tourism (0471) course for exams in EXAM YEARS 2024-2026.

Day trips, short breaks and longer holidays

A day trip is a leisure visit with no overnight stay. It usually lasts at least 3 hours and takes place more than 3 miles from home. A day visitor is called an excursionist: a same-day visitor who returns home to sleep.

A short break is a leisure trip of 1 to 3 nights away from home, often over a weekend or bank holiday. Four or more nights counts as a longer holiday. Staying with family or friends still counts as tourism. This is called VFR (visiting friends and relatives).

Trips inside your usual environment, such as the school run, the daily commute or a walk to the local shop, are not tourism at all. Platform 1 of the game, the Ticket Office, tests exactly these rules with real traveller tickets against the clock.

Market segments and what they want

A market segment is a group of customers with similar needs. For the Cambridge IGCSE Travel and Tourism (0471) course you should know what each segment looks for in a day trip or short break:

• Families: child-friendly attractions, value for money and family tickets, safe places with good facilities, fun mixed with learning, and journeys of 1 to 2 hours.
• Young adults (18 to 30): nightlife, festivals, adventure, Instagram-worthy experiences, budget beds such as hostels, and places they can reach by public transport.
• Empty nesters (whose children have grown up): culture and heritage, peaceful natural places, good food, comfortable hotels and off-peak travel to avoid the crowds.
• Couples: romantic settings, spas, boutique hotels, fine dining and beautiful scenery.

On Platform 2, the Dispatch Desk, you read each traveller's clues, name their segment, then send the coach across a 3D map of Britain to London, Bath, Edinburgh, the Lake District, Alton Towers, Cornwall, Brighton or Manchester.

Impacts of tourism: the Bath case study

Bath is a UNESCO World Heritage city and one of the UK's most popular short-break destinations, with millions of visitors a year. Most of them are day visitors who leave by the evening, and that brings both benefits and problems. Impacts can be positive or negative, and they fall into three types:

• Economic: money, jobs, spending and prices. Day visitors spend far less than overnight visitors, and seasonality makes jobs rise and fall through the year.
• Social: effects on local people, such as overcrowding and congestion, or better museums and facilities paid for by tourism.
• Environmental: pollution, litter, erosion and harm to wildlife and historic buildings.

On Platform 3 you become Bath's destination manager. For each event you name the type of impact, then choose a visitor management response. Real strategies used in Bath include Park & Ride sites, a Clean Air Zone, spreading visitors to quieter areas, year-round events and a Discovery Card that gives residents free entry to attractions. Your choices move three meters for the economy, the local community and the environment.

Exam tips

• Learn the overnight rule: no overnight stay means a day trip and an excursionist, while 1 to 3 nights means a short break.
• When you match a destination to a market segment, link a feature of the place to a need of the segment, such as a free museum for a family on a budget.
• Always say whether an impact is economic, social or environmental, and whether it is positive or negative.
• When you suggest a way to manage visitors, explain how it reduces the problem and mention any downside, for example a Park & Ride costs money to run but takes traffic out of the historic centre.