UK holiday blues?

Every now and again an idea really does take off. Thomas Cook, the UK travel giant wanted to be seen as a holidaymaker’s champion and be front-of-mind during the booking season. What better way than to campaign for more statutory holiday? Launched on Boxing Day, the campaign we’re helping them to run has garnered 250,000 signatures to a petition calling for the Prime Minister to introduce a new Bank Holiday across the UK (and given our US colleagues are currently enjoying Martin Luther King Day, a national public holiday today this post is well timed). It’s really caught the imagination as evidenced by the sheer volume of comment about the campaign and the issue in the media and online.

Admittedly, it is hard to find someone who doesn’t want a new Bank Holiday. But there’s a solid case for one too as well as simply wanting an extra day off. The UK currently has only eight public holidays a year. Only Romania has less than Britain in the EU with five days. The European average is 11 public holidays a year and most major European economies have higher productivity than the UK.

The campaign has been in the public domain for just under a month but already there is a substantial body of support and a growing momentum that Government is, from what we understand, listening to and sympathetic to. The petition is online at www.thomascook.com and there’s also an active Facebook group charting the campaign’s progress http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8078329337. So for those in the UK who fancy an extra day off please join up and vote.

Thomas Cook also have the massive good taste to sponsor Manchester City

[tags] Thomas Cook, Bank holiday [/tags]