La Great British Seaside Holiday è sulle sue ultime gambe?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79l3j5lze5o
di tylerthe-theatre
La Great British Seaside Holiday è sulle sue ultime gambe?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79l3j5lze5o
di tylerthe-theatre
44 commenti
If my recent visit to ramsgate was anything to go by, no it’s not on it’s last legs, it’s died and pushing up the daisy’s
It had been on life support since the origin of package holidays and died around the time budget airlines started operating
I hope not. Will miss the knotted hankies and white semmets.
The seaside holiday is being replaced by the seaside day trip. It’s much easier to pop over to the coast, with most of Britain being an hour or two by train or car from a seaside town.
The big problem with seaside resort towns is they don’t know what they want to be. The people who’ve been running attractions there for years cling to the old school kiss me quick chips and ice cream by the beach with a cheap B&B nearby but people have moved on from that. So we have day trippers showing up at these fading towns and enjoying the ocean / beach aspect of the experience while largely repulsed by the town and crap attractions attached. This has a massive impact on their desire to spend the night and to return.
Some towns are making bold strides to update themselves: Colwyn Bay is a seriously rough town that is falling apart, but they’ve wisely invested in their seafront, not cheezy arcades or ‘attractions’ but a thorough revamp of it’s seaside prom. Day trippers can step off the train, and immediately be on the beach, walking along a very nice, interesting beachside walkway with chairs, tables, free things to keep kids amused and simply enjoy the beach and ocean without the huckster faff. And the seaside prom is free! Day trippers from Birmingham and Manchester and so on can wake up on a Saturday morning, hop a train, and be walking on the beach in couple of hours and then home in the evening. An they completely avoid the horrible town and whizzy crap attractions taht cost too much and cheapen the whole experience of other towns.
The city managers who run seaside towns need to restructure the whole experience for daytrippers, offering huge free draws, in the hopes of drawing enough people who will also maybe purchase an ice cream or chips on the prom. Just stop it with the big expensive ‘attractions’ no one wants or asks for. The ocean and the beach are awesome on their own.
As a holiday, yes. Nice to go for a day or for maybe a weekend but that’s all for many people I know.
I recall seaside holidays as a kid. Guest houses and
Bnb’s were often awful, as were the people who ran them. A lot of seaside towns were geared towards taking as much money as possible out of working people and giving the absolute minimum in return and they got away with it for decades until finally the public had access to affordable flights and hotels abroad.
Yes. No wonder. Take Scarborough, a great place to visit when I was a kid, left to decay for years & they wonder why no-one wants to visit.
North beach you could spend an entire day there without venturing into town, all the attractions over the years gone & replaced with hideous holiday lets (that originally killed the local bird life).
Futurist Theatre, the largest theatre outside London, allowed to fall into disrepair for decades before being demolished its empty space being handed over to a pathetic attempt of a mini London eye.
I took my own kids once, it was an awful day out, everything an attempted rip off, down to a council employee sat at the entrance of the harbour top bogs charging for (& pocketing) to use the disabled toilet, he’d locked the others.
So they deserve all they get, the people moan it’s the council not investing but those same people keep voting for & returning the same old councillors year after year. I know this to be true I have family from there & live not too far away, it’s a real shame what’s happened to the place.
Seaside towns look exactly the same and offer pretty much the same attractions now compared to when i went as a kid, 30 odd years ago. Times change and these places havent (other than the same attractions looking more run down)
Week long yes, but I still enjoy weekends.or just days out to the seaside, based around Doncaster I can get to Blackpool by trian in under 4 hours, cleethorpes in just over 2, and I can reach Great Yarmouth in 6-7.
We recently did a trip to Blackpool in April and left in the afternoon, got there had us fun, went to a travelodge, order takeaway, slept and left in the morning.
Greed has helped kill it – a week in a Cornish cottage is £££ off the price pump from Covid. Landlords shooting themself and the locals in the foot in one go for some quick cash
I think it’s a chicken and egg situation.
Accommodation need to up their game in the quality stakes but…. they can’t do that without prices going up and putting people off.
That seems to suggest coastal “resorts” have to rely on local footfall.
I think some folks think the south coast is off limits due to illegal landings and dont want their kids anywhere near that.
The big question is what can the coastal towns and their councils do to revive their areas and boost the tourist economies.
Support for small businesses for that appears key to me.
These days Portsmouth/Southsea has a lot of attractions but it wasn’t always the case. It was heavily bombed during WW2 and when I moved to SE Hampshire I thought it was a dump.
Today visitors can enjoy the historic naval dockyard which is home to the Mary Rose museum. There’s also the D Day museum. A short trip over the water on the Gosport Ferry and one can visit the submarine museum.
Gunwharf Quays is a designer shopping centre with cinema, casino & bowling alley.
People stay overnight before going to France on Brittany Ferries.
Folkestone is a case in point where it has dramatically improved, just google ‘Folkestone harbour arm’. We live close and visit often (more so if we have people visiting us). Our preferred choice just for us is Hythe, 10 minutes from Folkestone. Lovely seaside town, really vibrant high street (yes lots of charity shops!) but lots of independent stores too.
They failed to modernise. Went to Weston-Super-Mare recently and it’s a shithole. Crackheads and urban decline everywhere.
Best part was M.T. Games. Great shop.
Let me see –
Stay in Britain – accommodation is super-expensive, food is super-expensive, weather will probably be crap.
Or –
Go abroad – accommodation much cheaper, food much cheaper (and generally much better), weather will probably be excellent.
Same problem as the high streets – we are stuck trying to push the same shit that worked 50years ago.
You need to give people a reason to go to places and though I hate to use the term, for the ‘gram. I use that expression because it accurately summarises the feeling of experience. I don’t want to drive an hour to Blackpool, to be surrounded by tramps, derelict building and scam artists, when I have that experience 2 minutes from my door.
Southport is making strides in the right direction, making the town look nice (even though you can still see the poverty at times). Why in the fuck would I spend a hundred quid a night, when there’s nothing to show for it.
We need much, much stricter planning committee’s because staring at countless B&M warehouses and shite grey shops doesn’t involve that sense of wonder. There’s a reason people save to get to the places that look nice
It really feels that in the pursuit of profit, the UK forgets the reason people want to spend money when they go places in the first instance, start with beautification.
The cheesy attractions do have a charm to it I would say the quality of food and the people is the biggest turn off for a lot of people! The racist graffiti everywhere, flags and reform voters side eyeing you isn’t exactly a fun break.
These towns are also really out of touch of what quality people are used to, we went to Great Yarmouth I was in NEED of something – anything not fried. We walked past a place I said ‘that looks nice!’ Realised It was a spoons – but was literally the only place that looked like it might have passed a health inspection in the last 10 years.
As you said the beach was beautiful, we had fun but I didn’t deviate far from the main strip, we tried that and we even saw far right posters on the backs of loo doors in cafes. I was refused service in a coffee shop. Just stared at blankly when I asked to order. So yeh it’s more expensive but I’ll stick to the south west coast / more visited places, we shouldn’t have to pay for the privilege but there we are!
Expensive parking, expensive hotels, unpredictable weather.
No wonder people prefer Spain.
It really depends on where you are talking about. Some places, especially in the South West, have done a great job in trying to diversify the type of tourists they get – think surfing etc. Though accommodation is insane in a lot of these places, and I’ve noticed a lot of the old school b&bs are disappearing as the owners retire or die and becoming much more expensive places you’d hire as a group rather than a couple or small family.
Nice places are still doing well, sh*tholes are struggling…
East Anglia is our local “Seaside” compare going to Wells-next-the Sea or Southwold, with going to Great Yamouth.
Chalk & Cheese…
If your seaside town is falling apart, riddled with drunks/drug users, overflowing bins and littered streets, the odd p*ssed up offensive stag/hen do etc etc…why are you surprised when nobody visits?
Yes because every fucker goes to the seaside when it’s sunny,trash it and leave. I live in a seaside town and we usually get trashed by visitors
That and it’s cheaper to do a day trip then stay.
If you’re close enough for a day trip, then you’re probably only going for a day trip. Most places don’t have enough to see to keep you there for a week or more. The old holiday camps used to be good for keeping the kids entertained but they’ve mostly faded into obscurity or replaced with Center Parcs.
If you’re not close enough for a day trip, it will probably be cheaper to go abroad and you’ll get more for your money.
The seaside village on the Isle of Wight that was our holiday home for generations and that my parents have retired to and I have as my home base (as I live on a Canal boat some of the time) is doing great. We have sailing year round and a famous yearly regatta (not Cowes) that keeps us busy as a community and enjoying life.
It’s actually going to become more popular with rising temperatures and sea levels turning more and more towns into seaside towns in the future.
There seems to be no off season anymore whenever I visit Scarborough/mablethorpe/whitby. Seaside breaks are very much alive and well since covid.
This is so contradictory, literally there was an article the other day saying Brits were booking UK holidays last minute in record numbers because going abroad is out of reach.
I also want to say, I took my nieces to unity brean last week for 4 nights. It was amazing. From Birmingham we were there in 2.5 hours. The UK is becoming a warmer country which means there are fewer bad summers with unreliable weather. We went to the beach, the pool, the soft play and they didn’t want to go home. We did a LIDL shop on the way so it was easy to budget in self catered. So I’d say if anything the UK beach holiday is having a revival
Absolute nonsense. Come to cornwall, Devon or South Wales in the summer. It’s heaving.
The weather is unpredictable and the sea temperature rarely gets particularly warm. Why put up with that when for the same price you can get to the south of Spain? The fact is these towns will never be able to compete with the Med in summer
The seaside towns I’ve been to recently haven’t really moved with the times, they all look the same when I used to go in the 90s.
Same old shop fronts, same old market stalls, same old dodgy side streets.
Caravan parks are damn expensive.
The holiday itself puts a dent in the wallet then you have the activities and food, drink etc.
You can go abroad all inclusive for less than a weekend in a haven.
I live in Southend and that’s a shit hole so I drive to get Yarmouth for a day trip, that’s less of a shit hole but still looks like the postcards from the 90s
The issue with a British seaside getaway is they fall into two categories- towns that are on their knees and not particularly nice to go to these days(Blackpool etc) or monstrously expensive- in some cases more than an all inclusive in the Mediterranean- but nicer (Cornwall etc). For the latter, As beautiful as those areas are, if I’m going to drop that sort of money I’m going to somewhere more exotic
“The traditional British seaside holiday first became popular in the 1950s and 1960s…”
Really? Surely the writer means the 1850s and 1860s – seaside resorts began springing up with the growth of the rail network and cheaper fares
For a day maybe, but when I can fly across the world and stay in great hotels for the same price, I dont see the point.
We went to Blackpool during November last year as the kids were off for the long weekend.
We did all the usual touristy things and spent in excess of £1200 for the weekend.
Yes we could have easily saved some money by skipping things, but it the cost absolutely put us off going back for a while.
We could have gone a weeks all inclusive for another £200!
Looked at 5 days around BH in august was £1200 guess the local economy priced itself out
We just stayed in Cornwall for the week (Lizard area). The only built up seaside town we went to was St. Ives but that was because the kids wanted to surf. The rest of the time was National Trust/English Heritage days out or the little cove beaches (Kynance, Gunwalloe) or Praa Sands. Great time.
Why would I want to stay over? I feel like I already regret my life choices after I’ve finished the first ice cream. Not to mention it’s the best part of a 10er
The British seaside holiday has changed. Just look at the huge caravan parks on the coast. Lots of people are going to the seaside but they’re doing it in a different way.
There was a news piece yesterday saying domestic holidays are doing better than ever, but I think the piece was highlighting people going for late booking deals and booking for 3 or 4 days as opposed to a week.
Not in Cornwall, this year is the busiest year since Covid.
I think it depends on the location. There are some that seem really stuck in the past and slowly declining because of it (Weston Super-Mare, Blackpool come to mind).
Whereas a lot of the smaller towns seem to be going to gentrified route with art galleries, boutique / independent shops, and finer dining. A lot of the towns in Cornwall/ Devon and Pembrokeshire seem to have this vibe. Not saying it’s the right way to go, but they don’t seem to be dying in the same sort of way
I went to Blackpool from Scotland, it wasn’t cheap and there was a lot of grim between the shine. Spent a week in outer hebs this year, much better!
The old fashioned working class British seaside holiday isn’t a thing any more, because those people will go to Benidorm or Ibiza, or more recently places like Turkey or Croatia.
And while the UK currency is stronger than a lot of the places you can fly to, there will always be a problem of it being more expensive to holiday “at home” than go abroad, and it’s less exotic (for us! lots of foreigners love a visit to the UK!).
But in my experience seaside towns are significantly nicer than in the 90s. Hotspots like the south-west or Bournemouth or Whitby are rammed in season. Everyone was forced to holiday in the UK in 2021, and even in ’22 there were a lot of travel restrictions, and lots of people discovered that it’s actually quite good.
The article is talking about numbers being down on ’22 – well, that’s not surprising, not *everyone* wants to stay in Britain every year. There was a little bit of an over-expansion and there will be a small retrenchment from that. But take a look at numbers in 2015 or 2005 compared to today.
Another point is that, as climate change makes some of the foreign sun/sea/sand destinations too hot to enjoy in summer, more temperate places like Britain will become more popular and appreciated. You might not want to go to the beach in 20C and drizzle, but you aren’t going to want to lie on a beach and fry at 40C either, and the former looks more appealing if the Algarve has the latter.
People like to take the piss out of our weather but actually, in summer holiday season, the UK has pretty good weather generally, especially eastern Britain. And we have long sunny evenings which southern Europe doesn’t, due to our latitude.
Spent some time on the south coast this last week and find it hard to disagree. Seaside towns feel very dated, and even in August they are both very quiet, and also don’t feel fully open. Eg went into a pub which does good food at 6pm and was told that the kitchen had closed. Lots of other bits not open during what must be prime tourist time for businesses. Amazed any of it stays open.
Strangely, saw quite a few people from overseas in the towns, and I thought Why? Sure we kind of like the kitchen nostalgia angle, but why would someone from Netherlands come over?
My thought was that it wouldn’t take vast amounts of money to buy up large chunks of a seafront and modernise with the hope of keeping people coming back.
Unfortunately seaside towns have declined due to a lack of investment and modernisation…
For those seeking modernisation or character it’s easier and cheaper to hop on a train or plane and visit Europe which has managed to keep it’s civic emblems..
If you want egg and chips washed down with Carling then it a dream..🤔
I find it odd that accommodation specifically wasn’t mentioned ONCE. It’s clearly the main reason people are day tripping rather than staying overnight. They’re not avoiding £4 coffees or £20 meals… they’re saying no to £150 a night to stay in a glorified shed in someone’s back garden.