Holidays are becoming more active, the once relaxing day trip to the seaside now seems to most people boring with little to do except swim in the sea and make sand castles with little alternative entertainment aside from visiting the arcade, whereas modern holidays are more exciting with diving, safariing, skiing to see unfamiliar and unusual things, which has not changed, what has changed is what is ‘unfamiliar and unusual’ partly because of the availability of information on the internet and television, once people learn about things like rhinoceros’s or Chinese new year festivals, being at a crowded beach with a few rock pools is going to look pretty dull in comparison to the modern traveler.
Blackpool is a large seaside resort and is probably the most famous in all of Britain and needs a lot of tourists to keep it sustained with acceptable levels of profit but is unfortunately falling into decline because of changes in tourism, many buildings are falling into decline, which attract the homeless and sometimes crime which repels visitors as are the beaches and the quality of the sea water is falling because of pollution which are deterring further potential tourists.
To change Blackpool from decline to rejuvenation, the council is improving its tourism strategy.
To do this improvements are being made to transport links to increase accessibility, accommodation is being renovated to be more appealing and beaches are being cleaned with a ‘clean up campaign’ grant of 21 million pounds which will go towards raising the quality of the water by decreasing the levels of waste and sewage being dumped into the system which will also remove the health risks posed by these such as cuts and infection from glass or metal and lower risk of diseases such as tetanus and poisoning.
The grant is also being used for improvements to the promenade which suffers the same pollution problems as the beach so the primary resource base declines which leads to the spiral of decline and causes lower profitability and low investment and so further lowers the quality of the resort so fewer high spending long term tourists come and there is a greater dependence on low spending day trippers by encouraging people to take short breaks and second holidays, most of who travel by private transport and creates a strain on the local road systems. To stop the wearing of roads the local council is developing the coach and bus facilities and has closed the railway to provide more space.
To combat this spiral of decline Blackpool is encouraging new activities and facilities such as new indoor entertainment complexes and replacing old buildings and swimming pools to renovate the area to make it look more appealing so it does not entirely depend on people coming for the beaches by attracting conferences and exhibitions and can be seen from the development of the Blackpool illumination lights which attract out of season visitors which are more likely to be the elderly who have the greatest amount of free time so local restaurants and bars would cater for the majority of tourists to gain the most income and lengthen the tourist season to provide more variety for tourists.