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THIS IS likely to be a tough year in the tourism and leisure sectors as the number of foreign visitors is expected to fall. Already, some enterprises have battened down the hatches by reducing staff numbers and introducing three-day weeks. Others have simply gone out of business. A return to growth in the sector may be delayed for two years.

In these hard times, surrendering to pessimism would be the easy option. But those with long experience of the tourism sector know that it operates in cycles and that better times lie ahead. The industry experienced a fall in the number of visitors in 2001 and 2002, following 9/11 and the economic downturn caused by the dot-com crash. But it went on to entertain a rising number of foreign customers for each of the following five years. And while current economic upheavals are of a far greater magnitude, so too are the remedial measures being put in place by governments across the globe. We must be in a position to take advantage of the upturn in tourism when it comes. Particular problems have been created by the fall in value of sterling and the dollar against the euro. These are two of our most important markets and surveys have indicated that consumers there are extremely price-sensitive. As a consequence, initial growth is expected to come from the eurozone and from the domestic market.