How Pontins lost its 'razzmatazz' with just three holiday parks left

by · Mail Online

Its world famous Bluecoats helped launch the careers of Shane Ritchie, Bobby Davro and Bradley Walsh. 

But having once been a much-loved British family holiday staple, Pontins is now in the midst of a deep crisis.

In its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, the business was thriving with hoards of British families excitedly loading up their cars to drive off to one of its 30 parks scattered across the country. 

There are now just three left clinging on for survival. 

If owners Britannia were left in doubt of the public's perception of Pontins, then a recent survey in which it was voted the worst holiday resort in Britain will be a startling wake-up call. 

The Pontins at the Spanish-style Riviera Hotel in Weymouth on a hot sunny day in 1987
The famous bluecoat cabaret entertainers at a Pontins Holiday Camp circa 1993
People watch a beauty contest at the Middleton Tower Holiday Camp near Morecambe in the 1950s. The Pontins site shut in 1993
A man and woman take to the dance floor during a Pontins 'Rhythm Riot Weekend' at the now closed Camber Sands site in Sussex  
Sir Fred Pontin first launched Pontins in 1946, offering half-board and self-catered holidays with entertainment at resorts around the country
The Pontins in Pakefield, Suffolk, (pictured in 2009) is today one of only three remaining parks

The results of the Which? survey will make for unsavoury reading for the company's multimillionaire boss Andrew Langsam. 

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Pontins voted the worst holiday resorts in the country in study by consumer group Which?

Customer service, cleanliness, quality of accommodation, food and drink and value of money were all given just two stars.

It's a brutal assessment for somewhere that will hold fond memories for many Brits and a far cry of Langsam's vow to sprinkle the parks with some Disney-style fairy dust.

'It's not brain of Britain stuff,' the tycoon bragged to The Guardian in 2011 having just parted with £20 million to drag Pontins out of administration. 

'I plan to put some razzmatazz into it,' he crowed with £25 million put aside to inject some much needed life into the parks.  

Yet in the near decade-and-a-half since Britannia's takeover, it has been more Goofy than Mickey Mouse with the hotel chain unable to stem the decline. 

Family accommodation at a Pontins holiday camp in the 1980s, when the brand was a rival to Butlins for a UK getaway
Britannia Hotels Group bought Pontin's out of administration for a reported £20million in 2011
A group of revellers on a chalet balcony at the Rockabilly Weekend at Pontins, Camber Sands, East Sussex, in June 2013
Bluecoat cabaret members take part in a balloon sketch at one of the Pontins holiday parks in the 1980s
The guests outside the chalets at Pontins Holiday Camp, Osmington Bay, Dorset, in 1958

Prestatyn, in North Wales, and Camber Sands, in Sussex, were immediately shut down without warning at the back end of November last year.

Two months later Southport, in Merseyside, was added to the Pontins graveyard with bosses blaming flooding caused by Storm Henk for the closure. 

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Pontins closes two resorts with 'immediate effect': Holidays are thrown into chaos as firm announces Camber Sands and Prestatyn sites will shut

Staff claimed they were told by text at the eleventh hour that their jobs no longer existed. 

With EDF staff being housed in the Brean Sands park in Somerset for the next three years while work is carried out on a new nuclear power plant, it means families have two parks to pick from: Pakefield, in Suffolk; Sand Bay, in Weston-super-Mare.

The demise is as startling and rapid as one of Pontins' water slides.  

Rumours too have swirled online that the Prestatyn and Camber Sands parks were to be housed with 1,600 migrants rather than happy families enjoying their holiday. 

The Home Office strongly denied those rumours insisting to MailOnline there were no plans for them to be used.  

Langsam - dubbed the 'Asylum King' - has built up an estimated £248m fortune through Britannia Hotels, enjoys lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts to house asylum seekers across its 60 sites - at least 17 of which are said to have been block-booked.

Tycoon Alex Langsam has built up an estimated £248m fortune through Britannia Hotels, which has been handed lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts to house asylum seekers 
Owners of the Southport park, pictured in 2020, said in a statement 'after assessing the future viability of the park, we have come to the difficult decision to close our doors'
The abandoned former Pontins Holiday Park, in Hemsby, Norfolk, was eerily pictured in 2014, six years after dwindling numbers caused its closure
The once much-loved UK holiday getaway has been blighted by a raft of closures in the last few decades

The hotel tycoon launched the company in 1976 with the purchase of the Britannia Country House Hotel in Didsbury, Manchester. 

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The entrepreneur has previously boasted of Britannia's role in safeguarding the future of some of Britain's most historic hotels, including the Adelphi in Liverpool - which was used by passengers on the Titanic - and the Grand in Scarborough.

But Britannia is now notorious for its Basil Fawlty style service, with it being named worst hotel chain for eleven consecutive years. 

Its entry in the Which? ranking of the best and worst hotels in the country makes for bad reading too: 'Run-down, dirty and once again the worst hotel chain in the UK. Avoid at all costs.'

Sir Fred Pontin first launched Pontins in 1946 offering half-board and self-catering holidays with entertainment at resorts around the country.

By the 1960s the business was thriving and Sir Fred's eyes began to wander abroad. In 1963, he formed Pontinental and with it came a slew of holiday villages in Spain, Majorca, Sardinia, Ibiza, Greece, Morocco and Yugoslavia. 

In 1978, Pontins was sold to the Coral Group for £56million and since then has gone through a number of new owners before it was saved in 2011 by Britannia when it fell into administration.

MailOnline has contacted Britannia Hotels for comment.