Nearly 7m Gen Z and Millennials in England can’t drive yet contribute about £18bn to England’s domestic visitor economy. Rural destinations that are set up for the majority of people to visit by car are already missing out, but perhaps more importantly, are they future-ready for this huge car-free-shaped slice of the future visitor economy pie?
The post-covid recovery in many rural visitor destinations in the UK has been patchy[i]. Many places have understandably been focusing on “more of the same” with regard to core visitor markets and – relevant here – how their visitors are expected to arrive and get around. Meanwhile, over in the transport sector, debates about peak car and the decline in amount younger adults drive[ii] and hold driving licenses[iii] have been playing out in parallel. So what happens when we stir these together?
I was struck by a comment in a recent LinkedIn post by Christopher Harte “25% of adult population don’t have a driving licence (50% when you count under 18s!) so driving isn’t actually an option for a large proportion of society”[iv]
Like many, I often quote the first number and have pondered but never lifted the lid on the second. I have (over?)used the evidence on younger people driving less and the reductions in them having driving licenses in the contexts of Making visitor economies future-ready, but here we dig into that a bit further.
How many people don’t have driving licenses?
The proportions and volumes of people without driving licenses in England in 2024 are shown in Figures 1 & 2[v]. Using these the National Travel Survey and ONS mid-year population estimates for England, it suggests that 27% of England’s 46.8m adults – 12.6m adults – do not hold driving licenses in England[vi].
Figure 1: Proportion of people by age category in England who do not have a driving license, 2024
Figure 2: Numbers of people in England in each age category without a driving license, 2024
But let’s focus on “young adults” – Gen Z (roughly <28) and Millennials (c. 29-44) – the reasons for doing so becoming clear in the next section (on economic value). The rate at which they don’t have driving licenses is much higher – 29% for 30-39 year olds, and a whopping 48% for 17-29 year olds. This means that more than 6.8m people under 40 in England can’t drive (note that the slight difference in NTS age categories against the Gen Z and Millennial cohorts).
“But they’ll get a driving license as they get older”… Not necessarily. I summarise this on this page – younger, urban adults are moving on in life with lifestyles where driving just doesn’t figure, and this is different to what used to happeniii,[vii]. Some people without licenses will still have access to a car by others in their household or friendships circles2, but the main idea is valid – that younger adults need to be able to visit without a car more than older adults.
So how would they visit rural destinations that are basically set up for cars? Take a young family from Birmingham[viii] or a couple from London – then consider the relative cost and hassle of a long weekend in the Lake District compared to a hop to a local airport for a short-haul flight-based trip to Spain[ix],[x].
What’s the economic value of these car-free younger adult tourists?
Data on the economic spend of visitors by age is a bit all over the place, however, considering the the proportions and numbers of Millennials + Gen Z people in England without driving licenses and the difficulties of car-free breaks in the UK, the following should ring some alarm bells:
“The younger Gen Z’s and Millennials are the highest spenders when they travel. Calling themselves ‘flashpackers’ they spend around about $3,500 per trip and $60 a day. Millennials make the most of their holiday – most taking an average of 35 days of vacation each year followed closely by Gen Z travellers, who travel 29 days each year. Around 35% of millennials stay in upscale and luxury resorts and hotels”[xi]
Visit Britain’s datai paint a slightly different picture, but leads to similar conclusions: there is a lot of economic value in Gen Z + Millennial domestic visitors: about £50bn (note that the age categories don’t quite marry). Of this, the Gen Z + Millennials who don’t have driving licenses represent an annual economic value of about £18bn – the majority of the estimated £22.1bn of domestic visitors of all ages who don’t have driving license
Figure 3: Total UK domestic visitor spend by age category (£m)
So what?
The tourism economic value of people without driving licenses in England is huge – £22bn.
This is about 30% of a total economic value of domestic visitors. Do rural destinations recognise the scale of this market? Do they know who they are (if they are under-represented in their surveys because they can’t get there to answer the survey) and do they know how to set up the destination to accommodate them and create appropriate marketable propositions at scale?
A large proportion of younger adults can’t drive and have significant economic value.
For destinations to fully capture this value – without adding to the local problems of visitor car congestion – they need to change at scale the ability for car-free visits and their destination profile and marketing to reflect this.
Are rural visitor destinations future-ready?
If younger adults aren’t learning to drive as they pass significant life stages like they used to, where will they visit in their lifetimes? When today’s younger adults are in their 40s, 50s and 60s, what will be their habits as tourists – and what will this mean for the economies of England’s rural visitor destinations?
“Green” or car-free visitor travel is almost exclusively framed through environmental lenses – carbon reduction, reduction in landscape impact of traffic – and/or equity. Here, we suggest that there are hard-nosed economic reasons to change the scale of ambition for making car-free visits not just easy/ier and cheap/er, but the norm for rural destinations.
Let’s go back to where we started. Many UK destinations have still not recovered in terms of economic value and volumes following the Covid disruptions[xii]. Whilst this is explained by issues such as ongoing cost-of-living pressures, don’t the data presented here suggest that we are missing a trick in not upping our ambition in making destinations accessible without a car at scale?
Many of Britain’s coastal resorts suffered a shock of decline in the 1960s – mainly attributed to the rise of relatively affordable package holidays overseas. Let’s not be too dramatic in the possible comparisons, but we are seeing enduring social change with regard to how cars fit into modern lifestyles, but the equivalent scale of adaptive change and preparedness required to provide car-free access to rural destinations is just not happening. It could happen and the destinations would – I’d suggest – be far more attractive if it did happen. My take on what “good” comprises overseas is here and applied to three Lake District valleys here. On the ground, groups are getting organised such as in the Ullswater valley (Lake District)[xiii] and Hope valley (Peak District)[xiv]. We need this to become the norm, not the exception – not just for environmental and fairness reasons, but for hard-nosed resilient economic prosperity.
[i] Visit Britain Great Britain Tourism Survey, https://www.visitbritain.org/research-insights/domestic-tourism-latest-results
[ii] https://www.demand.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/FutureTravel_report_final.pdf
[iii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kittyknowles/2018/01/26/peak-car-britain-uk-public-transport-statistics-driving-facts-smart-car-ownership/?sh=30d85c437e01
[iv] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/christopher-harte-fciht-cmilt-805a3828_londonwwc2025-walkwheelcycle-activetravel-activity-7373636592436953088-WFjp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAVytJYBGr3Mfw0aaOSI-clhvLPczx7RKOk
[v] Here, we focus on England just because it’s fairly straightforward to pull together the data
[vi] This compares to the 22% of households that don’t have access to a car, the difference being accounted for partly by at least one person in some of these households having a driving license
[vii] Chatterjee, K. et al. 2018 Young People’s Travel – What’s Changed and Why? Review and Analysis https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/young-peoples-travel-whats-changed-and-why
[viii] James Blake, CEO of the YHA set out this scenario in a presentation at https://www.cumbriaaction.org.uk/resources/assets/james-blake-sustainable-rural-transport.pdf
[ix] Carrick, A. 2024 How Gen Z revived the all-inclusive holiday… and why many are opting for ‘detour destinations’, blog at https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/holidays/article-13961121/How-Gen-Z-revived-inclusive-holiday-opting-detour-destinations.html
[x] Mark, C. 2024 What are Britons top travel destinations for 2024?, YouGov blog at https://business.yougov.com/content/48404-what-are-britons-top-travel-destinations-for-2024
[xi] How Do Travel Trends do Travel Trends Differ Between Gen Z, Millennials, & Boomers? (2025)
https://www.condorferries.co.uk/travel-statistics-by-age-group
[xii] Between 2024-2025, domestic overnight trips were down 18% (day visits by 1%), and overall value down by 8% (https://www.visitbritain.org/research-insights/domestic-tourism-latest-results)
[xiii] Sustainable Integrated Transport for Ullswater (SITU), https://situcumbria.org.uk/
[xiv] https://hopevalleyclimateaction.org.uk/travel/travelling-light/