Blackpool’s tourism bosses to dig deeper into visitor numbers

Despite a big jump in the number of visits made there's concern it's not representative of what people are seeing happening on the ground

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of The Blackpool Lead,

Luke’s taking a well earned rest this week - and celebrating his recent birthday - and he’s not the only one to have been enjoying a bit of R&R as Blackpool was packed amid the Bank Holiday heatwave.

While recent stats appear to show the town is on the up when it comes to people visiting, nearly 2million more visits year-on-year in the latest figures, there’s been queries made of the method used to work it out.

Tourism chiefs say this isn’t washing through into what they are hearing from businesses and those reliant on the tourist trade in Blackpool. And we also have more on the PR blitz that’s happening to try and counter social media videos and posts by content creators which regularly try to distort what life is like in Blackpool.

Blackpool briefing

🚧 Blackpool Council is submitting a government bid for £30m to fix the colonnades. The council has been invited by the Department for Transport’s £1bn Structures Fund to submit plans to repair and refurbish the historic Grade II listed North Promenade colonnades between the Metropole Hotel and Gynn Square. Almost one kilometre in length, the colonnades include three sections: Lower Walk at Gynn Square Crescent, Middle Walk from Warley Road to Pleasant Street and Princess Parade by the Metropole. Built between 1910 and 1925, they remain a much-loved part of Blackpool’s tiered seafront. However, like much of Blackpool’s built heritage, the colonnades are over 100 years old and in serious need of repair.

The Colonnades Pic: LDRS

Over the last few years, some entrances to the colonnades have had to close for safety reasons, however earlier this year work was completed to safely reopen three of the five entrances. Cllr Jane Hugo, Deputy Leader of Blackpool Council, said: “Our famous colonnades are hugely important – they are part of our built heritage. Residents and visitors use the area to walk, stay active and enjoy life living on our beautiful coastline.

“We’ve been working on a plan to restore the colonnades back to their former glory. That’s not cheap. To afford the level of repairs the colonnades deserve, we would have to go without any road repairs for over ten years. That’s why we’re submitting to government our urgent need for extra funding so we can restore them.

🥖 Cleveleys will be playing host to a four-day Continental Market for the first time this summer. It is being staged at The Plaza event space, on the seafront where the top end of Victoria Road West meets South Promenade. The market will feature between 20 and 25 stalls, including a small number of local stallholders from the Cleveleys area. The market will be staged from Thursday August 20 to Sunday August 23 from 10am to 6pm (with a 4pm finish on the Sunday).

Blackpool’s tourism bosses told to dig deeper into visitor numbers

Aerial view on a busy Blackpool day Pic: Visit Blackpool

By Michael Holmes

The number of people visiting Blackpool every year is in dispute - with the town’s new tourism boss calling for more accurate estimates.

Some 68.6m people are said to have arrived in the resort in 2024, up from 66.7m the year before, according to figures from Marketing Lancashire.

But members of the local authority’s tourism committee have questioned the stats and “raised concerns” about their reliability and the methods used to produce them.

“We are exploring other ways to calculate our visitor numbers, using data from things like footfall counters or electronic sales,” a council spokesperson told The Blackpool Lead.

“That is not to say at this stage that any of these systems are any better or worse than what we use currently.”

Town hall chiefs currently use figures from Marketing Lancashire, which uses the Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor (Steam), a model that uses local data from hotels, attractions, tourist information centres, events and other accommodation to estimate the number of visitors.