Butlins revamp pays off as revenues rise

Butlins has left its happy camper image behind and gone upmarket with spa days and a revamp of its resorts.

The modernisation has boosted annual revenues by more than 10pc across its holiday camps, which once helped inspire the BBC sitcom Hi-De-Hi, starring Su Pollard.



The firm, which owns sites in Minehead, Skegness and Bognor Regis, has also announced bookings for next year are up by 11per cent.

Its new Ocean Hotel in Bognor is a far cry from the original rather basic camp Billy Butlin opened in Skegness in 1936.

The new south coast holiday spot is running at 89pc capacity and managing director Richard Bates said: 'The Ocean Hotel has proven to be a big hit with guests and we're looking forward to another bumper year across all three resorts in 2010.'

The hotel has developed a range of spa treatments with an unusual twist.

This includes a Premier League Male Massage which takes place in a room with sporting highlights projected onto the wall, a father and son package, and a marshmallow facial for kids.

The phenomenon of the "staycation", in which cash-strapped Britons supposedly took their 2009 holidays close to home, was largely a myth, the managing director of Butlins said this week.

Richard Bates said that while Butlins's bookings were up by two per cent to about 1.5 million customers, this was largely thanks to the opening in August of the £20 million Ocean Hotel at the company's Bognor Regis resort. That offset a fall in bookings at its other resorts, in Minehead and Skegness.




"There was some talk that people were just going to give up their Tuscan villas for apartments in Skegness, but that clearly wasn't the case," he said. "Overall we've had a good year, but our growth has been largely driven by the new hotel. The staycation idea didn't deserve the hype that it got."

Manny Fontenla-Novoa, chief executive of Thomas Cook, would agree. Earlier this week, he reported that the number of summer holiday bookings made over the past four weeks were up 14 per cent compared with the same period last year. He suggested that the staycation was merely a story put about by British holiday companies.