Children clutching glow sticks shrieked with delight and onlookers gazed awestruck as Blackpool’s Illuminations lights festival launched to a spectacular volley of fireworks from its 158m Victorian tower.
The northwest English town’s lights display crowns an extended tourist season as Britain’s traditional seaside resorts benefit from a domestic tourism boom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Expensive COVID-19 tests, vaccine certification, quarantines and the UK government’s ever-changing traffic-light system for international travel have made overseas trips less attractive and even inaccessible for British holidaymakers.
Photo: AFP
However, the lifting of restrictions has helped domestic tourism, providing a boon to seaside resorts that were once Britons’ favorite destinations before the advent of cheap overseas package holidays to warmer and sunnier climes.
Blackpool, on the Irish Sea north of Liverpool and Manchester, embodies the rise and fall of the quintessential British seaside resort.
After the arrival of the railways, it became Britain’s premier mass tourist destination in the 19th and 20th centuries for city dwellers to escape smog, and enjoy bracing sea air and cheap entertainment.
However, affordable air travel and holidays from the 1960s lured Britons overseas and knocked Blackpool off its perch. By 2008, it offered 40 percent fewer bed spaces than in 1987.
Once synonymous with leisure and pleasure, Blackpool became a byword for decline and poverty.
A 2019 UK government study found that Blackpool had eight of England’s 10 most deprived neighborhoods. Its historic dependence on tourism and hospitality meant the pandemic dealt a devastating blow to the town’s economy and vulnerable social groups.
However, Blackpool and seaside towns like it have seen soaring domestic visitor numbers while international travel remains unpredictable.
Tourists thronged its promenade on Illuminations switch-on day earlier this month, to explore its tower, piers, theme park, beach, amusement arcades and shops selling fish and chips, ice cream and local sweet treat Blackpool rock.
Owen Wells, 23, a flamboyantly dressed welder, plumped for Blackpool instead of the hard-partying Spanish resort of Magaluf to celebrate his bachelor party.
“With COVID, it’s been awkward. A lot of my friends haven’t been vaccinated. It’s where we can go where we don’t have to isolate for two weeks,” he told reporters.
Administrator Michelle Potter, 55, said she was a seasoned visitor to Spain, Turkey and Cyprus, but this year opted to take her nine-year-old daughter to Blackpool.
“I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of going abroad and having to stick to restrictions. The UK is just as good,” she added.
Surveys by Britain’s tourism board have indicated that domestic holidaymakers have preferred traditional coastal towns this summer.
Rail and coach companies have recorded strong demand for other classic destinations such as Brighton and Bournemouth in southern England, and Scarborough in the north.
Blackpool restaurant owner Alex Lonorgan, 37, has enjoyed two busy summers in a row amid the hardship of three pandemic-enforced closures since March last year.
“It’s been amazing that so many families have had something different by having a UK holiday — Blackpool is going to be back on everybody’s map,” he said.
Lockdowns were also tough for 18-year-old Alfie Hayden, a doughnut and sweets seller. His shop had to shut on multiple occasions, but the future seems brighter, even if trade has not reached pre-pandemic heights.
“We were losing a lot of sales and it wasn’t very good. It is what it is,” he said. “This is the best place to come for a quick getaway and it’s brought up our sales a lot.”
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
Ten cheetah cubs held in captivity since birth and destined for international wildlife trade markets have been rescued in Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia. They were all in stable condition despite all of them having been undernourished and limping due to being tied in captivity for months, said Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which is caring for the cubs. One eight-month-old cub was unable to walk after been tied up for six months, while a five-month-old was “very malnourished [a bag of bones], with sores all over her body and full of botfly maggots which are under the
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
‘NO INTEGRITY’: The chief judge expressed concern over how the sentence would be perceived given that military detention is believed to be easier than civilian prison A military court yesterday sentenced a New Zealand soldier to two years’ detention for attempting to spy for a foreign power. The soldier, whose name has been suppressed, admitted to attempted espionage, accessing a computer system for a dishonest purpose and knowingly possessing an objectionable publication. He was ordered into military detention at Burnham Military Camp near Christchurch and would be dismissed from the New Zealand Defence Force at the end of his sentence. His admission and its acceptance by the court marked the first spying conviction in New Zealand’s history. The soldier would be paid at half his previous rate until his dismissal
RSS