Tagungsort Grand Hotel Heiligendamm

Die Bäderarchitektur im
Marketing von Destinationen
und Orten aus Großbritannien,
Polen, Litauen,
Russland und Deutschland
Allan Brodie,
English Heritage, The Engine House,
Gorßbritannien
Art and Culture in the Promotion of Seaside
Resorts
Today I will be discussing how some seaside
resorts in England are using art and culture as
key tools for regeneration, creating new attractions,
improving existing facilities and attracting
new visitors. Importantly, new residents
are also being attracted by the quality of life at
the seaside and a growing creative community
and atmosphere is being created. To illustrate
this I will concentrate on Margate in Kent, one
been in serious decline since 1970s.
Blackpool Beach
In the third quarter of the 20th century the
British seaside was booming. Millions of people
came by car, train and bus for their annual
holidays and crowded on to beaches, at least
on sunny days, but the English seaside also
provided its visitors with large facilities for indoor
entertainment. Blackpool, Britain’s most
popular resort, had the Winter Gardens, which
had evolved in the 60 years since its opening
in 1878 into a multi-functional entertainment
complex on an industrial scale, its Opera
House, Ballroom and Pavilion theatre each
holding thousands of people at a time. And
Blackpool also had its Tower, with the building
beneath it housing a huge ballroom, a circus
and other facilities, also capable of entertaining
thousands at a time.
And people wanted to live at seaside resorts
Margate Arlington House 1960
In the early 1960s at Margate a substantial
seafront development took place including an
attractive arcade with a tall skyscraper alongside.
This scheme offered a bright future for
new residents and visitors wanting to use the
seafront arcade of shops.
The 1950s seems like a golden age for the
seaside holiday but the peak actually occurred
in the mid-1970s when 40 million people took
a holiday in Britain of four days or longer at
the seaside.
Margate Arlington House 2006
However, other statistics show that the annual
migration to the Mediterranean sun was
already well underway. English seaside towns
were now faced with competition from re-
the familiar and the exotic. Mediterranean resorts
were relatively new with a better climate
and more modern facilities, whereas British
seaside resorts had ‘the constraints of decaying
infrastructure, designed for one era and
not evolving, or not physically able to evolve,
to accommodate the demands of another.‘
Competition from the foreign holiday was not
the only factor in the decline in the seaside’s
popularity; people in the late 20th century
could also choose from a wider range of domestic
holidays and leisure activities.
Margate Arlington Tower 2006
A potentially vicious circle can exist where
decreasing popularity leads to less private and
public income to invest, which in turn leads to
poorer facilities and therefore fewer visitors.
Add to this media stories of dirty beaches, po-
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