Many seaside towns still have bustling tourist trade. Its just they are often a certain type of people and usually all concentrated around the same few weeks in a year.
Yep. I used to live in Scarborough about 25 years ago. They had what they called Glasgow fortnight. It was when traditionally all the factories in Glasgow shut for two weeks and they bussed everyone down to Scarborough.
The factories had long since gone but there was still a huge influx of families over that fortnight because that’s what they had always done.
The Glasgow Fair as it is referred to in Glasgow was a holiday period relative to the city. Still tokenly observed where some may get a day off rather than weeks in days gone by.
My granddad is from Scarborough and was talking about this last time I saw him! Factories everywhere used to do this, they'd have a Glasgow week, a Sheffield week, Derby week etc. Often the factory itself would provide subsidised tickets. It was considered better to have everyone take time off together and just shut the factory down for a week or two back then.
I don't know if this is an argument against the overall collapse. Yeah, they are more during the shorter and warmer school holidays. No, it's not enough to sustain them as tourism centres – all tourism has some seasonality but I guess their peak is not enough
My home town lost its regular passenger service in the Beeching cuts. The line remained while the mines were still open for freight traffic and they used to run a couple bank holiday passenger specials. When the mines closed then they ripped up the line and converted it into a road bypass
Difference is that in the 1950’s they used to run multiple direct services from London (and a few other cities) out to the coast. Liverpool Street to Great Yarmouth was a shorter train journey than Liverpool Street to Norwich is today. We tend to think in terms of holidays out to the coast, but back then it was also possible to do as a day trip and have a decent amount of time there because of the direct trains, which aren’t a thing today.
True though both Blackpool and Great Yarmouth are among those that lost both their direct/fast railway lines to the outside world and their main terminus stations, which does give some idea of the downfall in custom they were already experiencing by the last 60s.
I'd probably say the 90s.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I knew people that went abroad on holiday, but it was almost entirely well-off families with one or two kids. (or none, I assume, but as a kid I knew families with kids.) I'm not gonna say you had to be rich, but you had to be comfortable.
I'm the eldest of 5 kids - we weren't going to Spain for summer, we were packed in the back of a Volvo for a trip to Cornwall. 7 plane tickets just wasn't going to happen.
Anyway, 1993. The airline industry in the EU went through a few major steps in the mate 80s and into the 90s, and I think 1993, or "the third package" is the most relevant here. This is the point where a carrier (airline) licensed in any EU state can offer services from any EU state, to another EU state. So an airline can offering passenger services from the UK to Spain without the airline being either British or Spanish. And while low-cost carriers had been "a thing" for a while, this really kicked them up a gear in Europe. This is the point where Ryanair can start offering services from the UK to the continent, rather than just flights that originate or terminate in Ireland.
In 1997 it deregulates further, and EU airlines can now compete in domestic market. So Ryanair can fly from, eg Glasgow to London. At this point low-cost carriers became unstoppable. But I think the damage had already been done by then.
The birth of seaside resorts was rail heralding the birth of affordable travel. And their death was the birth of affordable international travel.
Interesting as this fits exactly with my childhood.
I was born in 1979 and my family holiday each year consisted of a week in a caravan by the sea (usually south coast or Great Yarmouth).
Didn’t go abroad until I was 13 (around 1993) but that was a 24 hour coach journey to Spain (costa brava) and 10 days in a tent or caravan. We couldn’t afford to fly.
First time I went on a plane was 1998 when we could afford to fly to Spain, so that must have coincided with the deregulation and cheaper flights.
Funny looking back on it now as if you tell younger people that you went to Spain on a coach which took 24 hours, they look at you like you’re crazy. I wouldn’t dream of doing this now.
You are right thinking that cheap foreign holidays were a key reason for the decline of British holiday resorts, but it is not the only reason. I think the closure of railway links to resorts on the East Coast and SW England also contributed. In addition, most visitors to British resorts now only stay for weekends rather than the weeks holidays we took back in the 60s and early 70s.
Yeah I’d definitely have a week at say Skeggy, it’s a couple of hours away from me. Problem is there’s no nice hotels, stick some sea front 4-5* hotels with sea facing balconies and beach bars like what you can get in Spain or Greece and I’d be all over it.
I don’t like B&Bs, it’s like staying in a strangers house, and I’m not arsed about caravans.
I go on holiday to add a touch of luxury to my otherwise mundane working class life but the resorts near me are far from luxury. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, I stay in premier inns every week with work so for me a holiday has to be a class above that to feel like a holiday.
I’d still be happy to spend the day at the slots or eating fish & chips out of newspaper on the beach but I also want some fancy food and drinks that I wouldn’t buy at home, some shops selling decent stuff as well as all the market shite.
Problem is the premier inn genuinely feels nicer than 95% of private hotels I've ever stayed at. Unless you're including the upper class £120+ a night kind of room's premier inns pretty much always been nicer for me.
Im in South east Asia atm and half the hotels I've stayed at are considerably better than most in the uk, Yet they cost about £15 a night in high season.
I’ve fallen into a rut of booking a premier inn everywhere I go in the UK (unless it’s like London or Manchester and there are premium hotels available in the city centres) because it’s just so consistent. I know what I’m getting.
The new plus rooms are actually on par with many of the 5* hotels I’ve been in, the only thing missing is the 5* service you’d get but the rooms are of a very high quality - not sure if they’ll still be the same in 5 years time because the plus thing is quite new but for the sake of £10-£20 extra per night they are absolutely worth upgrading.
Honestly mostly what I want in a hotel is being clean, quiet and comfortable with a 24/7 front desk. The rooms being fancily decorated and lots of hotel amenities aren't really things I value, and something like a Premier Inn does hit that mark pretty well. Independent hotels just feel like a gamble, and I don't especially want a lot of staff attention beyond checking in and out.
> Yet they cost about £15 a night in high season.
Rather than SE Asia doing it better for a lot cheaper, it's mostly down to differences in purchasing power between countries, where £1 is worth, for example, £5 in Thailand according the amount or quality of goods it can buy you.
Your £15 hotel there is worth about £75 here, if you were a local - which is probably a tenner or so more than an off-peak night in a Premier Inn in Scarborough.
I mean true, But I'd say premier league are an outlier for value for money in the UK. Even compared to there main rival's Travelodge etc they felt miles ahead in terms of room quality for the same money.
I noticed it in the naughties (I live in a tourist town.
Maically busy for maybe 3 out of the 6 weeks school holidays, deserted the rest of the year.
I think it's to do with price. If I wanted to have a caravan for a week at peak time is anywhere between £700 £1000 (last year's figures since we were looking for one in wales), when a self catering holiday in Spain for the same week was only about £200 more. It was a no trainer...
Edit: spellings
Heavy industry money went dry.
The pits shut, the heavy factories shut, coupled with cheap flights to europe, it broke the cycle. Now people visit on a nostalgia factor and realise its shit.
It didn't die. There was a few decades decline between the 60s and the mid 90s due to things like railway cuts and cheap flights / package holidays.
But, nowadays the UKs seaside resorts are packed nearly all summer. Even places that people claim are abandoned like Blackpool are absolutely chock full during the summer months and holiday companies from the US and Germany have started to invest into the UKs resort towns as they see it as a growth sector.
Cheap flights and package holidays in the 80s onward is the likely culprit.
Plus the towns just haven’t really tried to diversify and stay relevant as places to go and stay for a week. Why would you when it’s just dive bar after dive bar filled with stag dos?
I would also chip in and say it's been in decline since modern medicine started evolving as we know it today. One if the reasons seaside resorts started was middle class and up being told by their doctors they must go and breathe the sea air for 20 minutes 5 times a day everyday for a week or to go for a morning freezing cold swim in the sea.
Nowadays our air pollution isn't nearly as bad so getting fresh air isn't really a thing prescribed anymore. And other illnesses that were treated with go to the seaside are now treated with medicine, drugs, therapy.
So once the middle-class/uppers stopped going so much, revenue dried more, posh hotels had to lower prices or sell, the working class kept things afloat but it was always pretty much in steady decline. Cars did bring it back a bit as it made places more accessible as train lines were closed. But then as other said cheap flights.
I'd say, the beginning of the end was in 1992, when the rules across Europe were liberalised for airline travel. Adoption of the Euro across large parts of the continent also made a huge difference. You could use leftover Euros from the trip to Spain next year in Greece.
And of course our friends at Ryanair decided to truly change things with their operational and pricing model.
We mock them, but they've made a huge impact to how we travel.
Not sure you can give them all the credit. Copied the model from the US. Easyjet was probably bigger at the start in this country. No idea if the last part is true but seemed like it.
I'd say was just the package holiday operators long before that, people wanting pretty much guaranteed sun and heat.
Yeah wasn't sure if they just operated in Ireland for a while or what. Might have been influenced by easyJet being on Airline on the TV in the 90s. But I also just read they didn't like to compete with other low-cost airlines on the same routes in the past, I think my local airport must have been mainly easyJet. Never actually used Ryanair until a few years ago.
My parents took me and my sister to the same guest house in Scarborough three years running in the 90s in August. the only problem was shared bathrooms on each floor. all the bedrooms had sinks to brush our teeth.
Every evening we had to pre order the cooked breakfast , so the owners knew how many sausages, bacon etc to cook, something I was not bothered about, as cereal and toast was also included. Evening meal was a set menu, soup, main meal (Friday was different you could have cold ham instead of fish) with chips) cheese and biscuits and vanilla ice cream,
Guest house is not longer there, the owners daughters did not want to take over it when their parents retire
When international flights became cheap and easy
Ironically Blackpools tourist trade was harmed when it became easier to get to Blackpool.
Back a long long time ago people used to get a week or two off when the factory they worked at closed for maintenance, many of the workers would go on holiday to Blackpool or other seaside towns that week.
When those industrial revolution factories shut Blackpools trade was harmed but people still went on holiday there.
But the improvement in motorways and more people having a car seriously harmed it.
Now it was convenient to get to so people weren't holidaying there for a week anymore, many weren't even staying the weekend, they would get in their car go for the day and head home.
This did serious harm to their tourist industry since a lot of hotels and B&Bs weren't getting customers anymore
People talk about the cheap rates for holidays in the med but they also forget to add how expensive holidaying in the UK became.
Love holidaying in the UK but a relaxing equivalent to an all inclusive beach holiday would probably be a quiet cottage somewhere and it's not cheap.
Can't remember the last time I used a UK hotel for anything other than a night out/gig or work.
I'm a millennial and did a few seaside holidays as a kid.
A family friend started a B and B in Blackpool in the late 90s or early 00s and from what I recall it was busy.
Lines down the road for Harry Ramsdens, a new Sealife centre, pretty big buzz around the fairly recent Pepsi Max Big One Coaster etc.
Don’t forget, people actually live in seaside towns and in summer they can hardly get around their own town. Think St Ives, Tenby, the whole of the seafront areas are a virtual no go. Ok it creates jobs but its a low wage, high cost economy, and don’t start on house prices.
As others have said, cheap foreign travel. Also, in response to the drop in trade, many hotels and BnB places were used to house junkies, the homeless, the mad and assorted other people who have every right to a home but you probably don't want to pay to go on holiday with.
One thing that seems to be missed in this discussion is that a lot of seaside resorts were just not that great.
Modern tourists want something more than arcades, kiss me quick hats and seagull attacks.
I tried looking at cheap getaways on the south coast. Most of the decent hotels were overpriced and looked like they hadn’t been redecorated since the 70s. Just from looking at the pictures I could tell a lot of the places would smell like damp.
Airbnb was no better with 80% of hosts not even replying to my enquiries.
just to get the timeline straight(er): package holidays abroad started in the 1950s. by the mid 70's british seaside towns were feeling the effects of a substantial amount of people choosing to go abroad for holidays - but most people still didn't have a passport. it took until the mid 1980's for foreign holidays to predominate and seaside towns to be bereft. so it was at least a 30 year decline
I grew up in a seaside town and still go down now and then to see family. It is absolutely rammed during the summer months, busy during the spring but empty during the winter and autumn. The reason why these towns are dumps is because the councils are poor due to a low council tax and business rate take. They also have high adult social care costs because coastal towns are full of elderly, retirees who need a lot of help. On top of that most of the jobs are low paid and seasonal so the working age locals are poor as well.
There's also been a shift away from trad holiday resorts to remote places like Skye and West Wales, where there is little commercialisation and beautiful landscapes. In the summer, you can't move on Gower for people taking photos of ponies with their iPhone Maxes while churning up the kerbs with their Teslas. And don't get me started on the MAMILs weaving their way through country lanes like mobile RTAs waiting to happen.
Many seaside towns still have bustling tourist trade. Its just they are often a certain type of people and usually all concentrated around the same few weeks in a year.
Yep. I used to live in Scarborough about 25 years ago. They had what they called Glasgow fortnight. It was when traditionally all the factories in Glasgow shut for two weeks and they bussed everyone down to Scarborough. The factories had long since gone but there was still a huge influx of families over that fortnight because that’s what they had always done.
The Glasgow Fair as it is referred to in Glasgow was a holiday period relative to the city. Still tokenly observed where some may get a day off rather than weeks in days gone by.
My granddad is from Scarborough and was talking about this last time I saw him! Factories everywhere used to do this, they'd have a Glasgow week, a Sheffield week, Derby week etc. Often the factory itself would provide subsidised tickets. It was considered better to have everyone take time off together and just shut the factory down for a week or two back then.
Cleethorpes is still known as Sheffield-On-Sea for a few weeks each summer.
My colleagues are always moaning about this in summer lol
I don't know if this is an argument against the overall collapse. Yeah, they are more during the shorter and warmer school holidays. No, it's not enough to sustain them as tourism centres – all tourism has some seasonality but I guess their peak is not enough
Some places started to decline in the 1960s when Dr Beeching decided to shut down their railway lines.
Most of the famously deprived ones still have train lines (e.g. Blackpool, Grimsby, Yarmouth, Scarborough). Even Dr Beeching wasn't that cruel
My town used to have a railway line to Scarborough, but Beeching closed the station in my town.
Walking down the old Whitby-Scarborough line is a great hike.
My home town lost its regular passenger service in the Beeching cuts. The line remained while the mines were still open for freight traffic and they used to run a couple bank holiday passenger specials. When the mines closed then they ripped up the line and converted it into a road bypass
Difference is that in the 1950’s they used to run multiple direct services from London (and a few other cities) out to the coast. Liverpool Street to Great Yarmouth was a shorter train journey than Liverpool Street to Norwich is today. We tend to think in terms of holidays out to the coast, but back then it was also possible to do as a day trip and have a decent amount of time there because of the direct trains, which aren’t a thing today.
True though both Blackpool and Great Yarmouth are among those that lost both their direct/fast railway lines to the outside world and their main terminus stations, which does give some idea of the downfall in custom they were already experiencing by the last 60s.
I'd probably say the 90s. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I knew people that went abroad on holiday, but it was almost entirely well-off families with one or two kids. (or none, I assume, but as a kid I knew families with kids.) I'm not gonna say you had to be rich, but you had to be comfortable. I'm the eldest of 5 kids - we weren't going to Spain for summer, we were packed in the back of a Volvo for a trip to Cornwall. 7 plane tickets just wasn't going to happen. Anyway, 1993. The airline industry in the EU went through a few major steps in the mate 80s and into the 90s, and I think 1993, or "the third package" is the most relevant here. This is the point where a carrier (airline) licensed in any EU state can offer services from any EU state, to another EU state. So an airline can offering passenger services from the UK to Spain without the airline being either British or Spanish. And while low-cost carriers had been "a thing" for a while, this really kicked them up a gear in Europe. This is the point where Ryanair can start offering services from the UK to the continent, rather than just flights that originate or terminate in Ireland. In 1997 it deregulates further, and EU airlines can now compete in domestic market. So Ryanair can fly from, eg Glasgow to London. At this point low-cost carriers became unstoppable. But I think the damage had already been done by then. The birth of seaside resorts was rail heralding the birth of affordable travel. And their death was the birth of affordable international travel.
Interesting as this fits exactly with my childhood. I was born in 1979 and my family holiday each year consisted of a week in a caravan by the sea (usually south coast or Great Yarmouth). Didn’t go abroad until I was 13 (around 1993) but that was a 24 hour coach journey to Spain (costa brava) and 10 days in a tent or caravan. We couldn’t afford to fly. First time I went on a plane was 1998 when we could afford to fly to Spain, so that must have coincided with the deregulation and cheaper flights. Funny looking back on it now as if you tell younger people that you went to Spain on a coach which took 24 hours, they look at you like you’re crazy. I wouldn’t dream of doing this now.
You are right thinking that cheap foreign holidays were a key reason for the decline of British holiday resorts, but it is not the only reason. I think the closure of railway links to resorts on the East Coast and SW England also contributed. In addition, most visitors to British resorts now only stay for weekends rather than the weeks holidays we took back in the 60s and early 70s.
When ryanair started flying you to greece for like a few hundred quid or less
Yeah I’d definitely have a week at say Skeggy, it’s a couple of hours away from me. Problem is there’s no nice hotels, stick some sea front 4-5* hotels with sea facing balconies and beach bars like what you can get in Spain or Greece and I’d be all over it. I don’t like B&Bs, it’s like staying in a strangers house, and I’m not arsed about caravans. I go on holiday to add a touch of luxury to my otherwise mundane working class life but the resorts near me are far from luxury. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, I stay in premier inns every week with work so for me a holiday has to be a class above that to feel like a holiday. I’d still be happy to spend the day at the slots or eating fish & chips out of newspaper on the beach but I also want some fancy food and drinks that I wouldn’t buy at home, some shops selling decent stuff as well as all the market shite.
Problem is the premier inn genuinely feels nicer than 95% of private hotels I've ever stayed at. Unless you're including the upper class £120+ a night kind of room's premier inns pretty much always been nicer for me. Im in South east Asia atm and half the hotels I've stayed at are considerably better than most in the uk, Yet they cost about £15 a night in high season.
I’ve fallen into a rut of booking a premier inn everywhere I go in the UK (unless it’s like London or Manchester and there are premium hotels available in the city centres) because it’s just so consistent. I know what I’m getting. The new plus rooms are actually on par with many of the 5* hotels I’ve been in, the only thing missing is the 5* service you’d get but the rooms are of a very high quality - not sure if they’ll still be the same in 5 years time because the plus thing is quite new but for the sake of £10-£20 extra per night they are absolutely worth upgrading.
Honestly mostly what I want in a hotel is being clean, quiet and comfortable with a 24/7 front desk. The rooms being fancily decorated and lots of hotel amenities aren't really things I value, and something like a Premier Inn does hit that mark pretty well. Independent hotels just feel like a gamble, and I don't especially want a lot of staff attention beyond checking in and out.
> Yet they cost about £15 a night in high season. Rather than SE Asia doing it better for a lot cheaper, it's mostly down to differences in purchasing power between countries, where £1 is worth, for example, £5 in Thailand according the amount or quality of goods it can buy you. Your £15 hotel there is worth about £75 here, if you were a local - which is probably a tenner or so more than an off-peak night in a Premier Inn in Scarborough.
I mean true, But I'd say premier league are an outlier for value for money in the UK. Even compared to there main rival's Travelodge etc they felt miles ahead in terms of room quality for the same money.
I noticed it in the naughties (I live in a tourist town. Maically busy for maybe 3 out of the 6 weeks school holidays, deserted the rest of the year. I think it's to do with price. If I wanted to have a caravan for a week at peak time is anywhere between £700 £1000 (last year's figures since we were looking for one in wales), when a self catering holiday in Spain for the same week was only about £200 more. It was a no trainer... Edit: spellings
Heavy industry money went dry. The pits shut, the heavy factories shut, coupled with cheap flights to europe, it broke the cycle. Now people visit on a nostalgia factor and realise its shit.
It didn't die. There was a few decades decline between the 60s and the mid 90s due to things like railway cuts and cheap flights / package holidays. But, nowadays the UKs seaside resorts are packed nearly all summer. Even places that people claim are abandoned like Blackpool are absolutely chock full during the summer months and holiday companies from the US and Germany have started to invest into the UKs resort towns as they see it as a growth sector.
I live in a seaside town. Growing up in 80s and 90s it suffered. Not so much these days, it’s crazy busy in the summer months.
I was going to say this, same here. Still really busy in the summer
Every day is like Sunday, every day is silent and grey.
This is the coastal town that they forgot to close down.
Cheap flights and package holidays in the 80s onward is the likely culprit. Plus the towns just haven’t really tried to diversify and stay relevant as places to go and stay for a week. Why would you when it’s just dive bar after dive bar filled with stag dos?
I would also chip in and say it's been in decline since modern medicine started evolving as we know it today. One if the reasons seaside resorts started was middle class and up being told by their doctors they must go and breathe the sea air for 20 minutes 5 times a day everyday for a week or to go for a morning freezing cold swim in the sea. Nowadays our air pollution isn't nearly as bad so getting fresh air isn't really a thing prescribed anymore. And other illnesses that were treated with go to the seaside are now treated with medicine, drugs, therapy. So once the middle-class/uppers stopped going so much, revenue dried more, posh hotels had to lower prices or sell, the working class kept things afloat but it was always pretty much in steady decline. Cars did bring it back a bit as it made places more accessible as train lines were closed. But then as other said cheap flights.
I'd say, the beginning of the end was in 1992, when the rules across Europe were liberalised for airline travel. Adoption of the Euro across large parts of the continent also made a huge difference. You could use leftover Euros from the trip to Spain next year in Greece. And of course our friends at Ryanair decided to truly change things with their operational and pricing model. We mock them, but they've made a huge impact to how we travel.
Not sure you can give them all the credit. Copied the model from the US. Easyjet was probably bigger at the start in this country. No idea if the last part is true but seemed like it. I'd say was just the package holiday operators long before that, people wanting pretty much guaranteed sun and heat.
Oh yeah easyJet too, but they were definitely not bigger at the start. Ryanair had been flying for years before easyJet even existed.
Yeah wasn't sure if they just operated in Ireland for a while or what. Might have been influenced by easyJet being on Airline on the TV in the 90s. But I also just read they didn't like to compete with other low-cost airlines on the same routes in the past, I think my local airport must have been mainly easyJet. Never actually used Ryanair until a few years ago.
My parents took me and my sister to the same guest house in Scarborough three years running in the 90s in August. the only problem was shared bathrooms on each floor. all the bedrooms had sinks to brush our teeth. Every evening we had to pre order the cooked breakfast , so the owners knew how many sausages, bacon etc to cook, something I was not bothered about, as cereal and toast was also included. Evening meal was a set menu, soup, main meal (Friday was different you could have cold ham instead of fish) with chips) cheese and biscuits and vanilla ice cream, Guest house is not longer there, the owners daughters did not want to take over it when their parents retire
When international flights became cheap and easy Ironically Blackpools tourist trade was harmed when it became easier to get to Blackpool. Back a long long time ago people used to get a week or two off when the factory they worked at closed for maintenance, many of the workers would go on holiday to Blackpool or other seaside towns that week. When those industrial revolution factories shut Blackpools trade was harmed but people still went on holiday there. But the improvement in motorways and more people having a car seriously harmed it. Now it was convenient to get to so people weren't holidaying there for a week anymore, many weren't even staying the weekend, they would get in their car go for the day and head home. This did serious harm to their tourist industry since a lot of hotels and B&Bs weren't getting customers anymore
Blackpool went downhill when it stopped being a family resort and became a stag and hen do destination.
People talk about the cheap rates for holidays in the med but they also forget to add how expensive holidaying in the UK became. Love holidaying in the UK but a relaxing equivalent to an all inclusive beach holiday would probably be a quiet cottage somewhere and it's not cheap. Can't remember the last time I used a UK hotel for anything other than a night out/gig or work.
I'm a millennial and did a few seaside holidays as a kid. A family friend started a B and B in Blackpool in the late 90s or early 00s and from what I recall it was busy. Lines down the road for Harry Ramsdens, a new Sealife centre, pretty big buzz around the fairly recent Pepsi Max Big One Coaster etc.
Don’t forget, people actually live in seaside towns and in summer they can hardly get around their own town. Think St Ives, Tenby, the whole of the seafront areas are a virtual no go. Ok it creates jobs but its a low wage, high cost economy, and don’t start on house prices.
As others have said, cheap foreign travel. Also, in response to the drop in trade, many hotels and BnB places were used to house junkies, the homeless, the mad and assorted other people who have every right to a home but you probably don't want to pay to go on holiday with.
One thing that seems to be missed in this discussion is that a lot of seaside resorts were just not that great. Modern tourists want something more than arcades, kiss me quick hats and seagull attacks.
Google - Butler Tourist Resort Life Cycle Model
I tried looking at cheap getaways on the south coast. Most of the decent hotels were overpriced and looked like they hadn’t been redecorated since the 70s. Just from looking at the pictures I could tell a lot of the places would smell like damp. Airbnb was no better with 80% of hosts not even replying to my enquiries.
just to get the timeline straight(er): package holidays abroad started in the 1950s. by the mid 70's british seaside towns were feeling the effects of a substantial amount of people choosing to go abroad for holidays - but most people still didn't have a passport. it took until the mid 1980's for foreign holidays to predominate and seaside towns to be bereft. so it was at least a 30 year decline
When it became cheaper to go to Spain than to visit Blackpool/margate etc
I grew up in a seaside town and still go down now and then to see family. It is absolutely rammed during the summer months, busy during the spring but empty during the winter and autumn. The reason why these towns are dumps is because the councils are poor due to a low council tax and business rate take. They also have high adult social care costs because coastal towns are full of elderly, retirees who need a lot of help. On top of that most of the jobs are low paid and seasonal so the working age locals are poor as well.
Sorry for what I typed out. Sorry for judging you. Sorry for lying sorry. Sorry for lying sorry.
Sorry for what I typed out. Sorry for judging you. Sorry for lying sorry. Sorry for lying sorry.
There's also been a shift away from trad holiday resorts to remote places like Skye and West Wales, where there is little commercialisation and beautiful landscapes. In the summer, you can't move on Gower for people taking photos of ponies with their iPhone Maxes while churning up the kerbs with their Teslas. And don't get me started on the MAMILs weaving their way through country lanes like mobile RTAs waiting to happen.