Taylor on Travel

The industry mantra that consumers won't forego their annual holiday had better weave its magic - because the screw is tightening on spending.

Latest figures from the US - where the downturn and popular awareness of it is in advance of the UK - show consumer spending fell at an annual rate of 3.1% between July and September. That is the sharpest fall since 1980, and the annual fall in purchases of big items - furniture and cars - was 14%.

The figures surprised economists - though what does not these days? Yet the contraction in the US economy, at 0.3% over the quarter, was lower than in the UK where GDP fell 0.5% in the same period. Consider the relative size of the two economies - the world's largest against one considerably smaller than Germany's - and you get some idea of the problems facing Britain.

UK house prices are now falling at the fastest rate since the early 1950s, making a mockery of previous claims that the current house-price decline would not be as bad as the early 1990s - remember those? The real decline of 18% in the past year, allowing for inflation, is worse than the headline rate of 14.6% according to Nationwide figures. That compares to an 18.8% fall spread over four years from 1989 to 1993.

None of the above figures include the last month, remember - when the government nationalised the banks, Iceland went bust and the world's financial system lost $2.8 trillion.

Economists increasingly predict recession through 2009 and stagnation for 2010, which sounds like small chance of recovery before 2011. In the meantime, a Credit Suisse analyst suggests, "households are spending on things they need, not on things they want".

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reports one in four UK employers are preparing to make staff redundant, warning of "a torrent of bad news" for the labour market. Managers, white-collar professionals and skilled non-manual workers are "most likely to suffer redundancy" says the CIPD - the kind of people who generally holiday abroad, maybe more than once a year.

Verbal repetition or chanting to ward off danger and bring reward has a long tradition. Unfortunately, so do recessions - and mantras have yet to be shown to help.