DORSET is seeing a major increase in holiday bookings.
One booking website says the county is proving among the most popular destinations in the UK as more people choose to holiday closer to home.
Pitchup.com has seen an 81 per cent increase in holiday bookings for Dorset from last year.
The county has already seen a strong start to the year with thousands of people visiting over the new year.
Figures from VisitBritain revealed that almost 400,000 tourists came to Dorset in 2017–the latest available figures–contributing more than £226m to the local economy.
This was a four per cent increase on 2016 where 381,000 visited the county with many businesses and tourist attractions feeling the benefit.
It is now hoped to substantially increase those figures for 2019.
Pitchup.com has more than 3,000 sites in 57 countries but has found that bookings to popular European destinations like France and Spain have gone down.
They found that the biggest winners were UK holidays, as Scotland saw a 100 per cent increase in bookings, followed by England
as a whole and Wales.
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