Look at any of the national media at the moment and you’ll find that tour operators have plenty of overseas holidays available.

At the same time, there appears to be a strengthening demand for domestic holidays.

The current spell of very hot weather in the UK will certainly be a factor in this welcome development; domestic holidays may also be benefiting from the strong promotion that the various English regions have been undertaking this year.

Whatever the reason, it’s a trend that Britain’s tourism and hospitality industries will need to harness to its own advantage.

British tourism has two aims: to increase the number of overseas visitors and, just as important, to encourage more British people to holiday in the UK. Overseas tourism is worth some £13bn; domestic tourism is worth about £60bn, including air fares. So it makes sense not to ignore what is already a huge market and one which could become even bigger with stronger promotion.

There are two other factors, too, that may not yet be sufficiently powerful to have had an impact, but which will certainly loom on the horizon in the next few years.

Security issues haven’t so far deterred many UK travellers (though Americans are noticeably affected) but the world is regularly subject to bouts of terrorism, conflict and localised war and no-one knows how these events will affect future tourism growth. At the moment, world travel is growing quite healthily but that is not guaranteed.

The other factor is the environmental challenge. Sooner or later, it is likely that air travel will be taxed more heavily, if only to slow down its huge rate of growth and the consequential environmental damage that this is claimed to cause. This may well reduce the growth of incoming travel but, at the same time, it may also deter British people from travelling abroad so frequently – in which case, the opportunities for the domestic holiday market will be enormous.

It is for this reason that developing home demand is fundamental to the future of UK tourism. With a £20bn imbalance of tourism payments – between what Britain earns from overseas visitors and the amount of money spent by British visitors overseas – the gap between overseas and domestic holidays is widening every year.

To reduce this gap, Britain’s tourism industry needs to be able to challenge overseas destinations in almost every aspect of the holiday experience, but particularly in quality and value. Constant reinvestment is thus required if we are to ensure that we can compete on an equal footing with the competition overseas. That’s nothing new, but we will have to pay even more attention to it in the future if we are serious about reversing the swing to overseas holidays.