Skegness voted best place in UK to visit by car

A study by auto-retailer, Robins & Day ranked the Lincolnshire resort for its 'easy-to-navigate town centre' and 'low-cost hourly parking'.

Robins and Day used a combination of desk research and national survey data in order to rank the UK’s top towns and cities for drivers to visit in the coming months.

With a reported £46.8 billion being spent on domestic tourism in 2020 and restrictions on the domestic hospitality industry relaxed in many parts of the UK since July 2020, staycations and day trips are once again on the up.

Robins & Day created a points system that took into consideration the following for each town/city:

- population size (with towns/cities with smaller populations earning more points)

- the number of UK motorists who planned to visit in the next six-months

- the number of UK motorists who said it was hard to navigate around/through by car

- the number of council-run, central car parks and their average cost per hour

- the number of public electric charging points and devices

- the number of petrol stations

- the number of speed cameras

This list of criteria was based on research by the auto-retailer on the things that are most likely to put Brits off visiting somewhere in a car.

Alongside Skegness, other UK towns and cities that claimed a place within the top 10, included Southampton, Ryde (on the Isle of Wight), Sheffield, Lancaster and Stratford Upon Avon.

The top 10 are:

1 Skegness

2 Southampton

3 Ryde (Isle of Wight)

4 Sheffield

5 Lancaster

6 Stratford upon Avon

7 Weymouth

8 Truro

9 Belfast

10 Portree (Isle of Skye)

As part of the research, Robins & Day surveyed 2,000 UK drivers about their domestic tourism plans, as well as which UK towns and cities they felt were the most challenging to navigate by car.

Just 10% of the nation were planning a day trip or holiday in a UK town or city pre-Covid, but 40% say they are now regularly visiting new places across the country.

Overall, how busy a destination is expected to be was understandably a key factor, with more than half of Brits (53%) stating this was their top reason for avoiding new towns/cities in the UK.

Similarly, expensive parking or a lack of free car park were also deciding factors for more than half of UK motorists (51%).