There were 147 bad reviews before the story broke and these bad reviews are the majority.
I'm curious about the dupe detector not spotting duplicates.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629113
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629117
Edit: this link is to the mobile site; one links to .com and the third links to .co.uk
Blackpool is a classic example of a seaside resort that's been badly hit by cheap package holidays to the sun.
As such you can expect it to be full of hotels hanging on by their fingernails.
Also it's known to have lots of social welfare bed and breakfast establishments.
You'd need to be living under a rock in England not to know that.
If you're just going from A to B and want a stopover you're better off going with one of the chains. I actually like premier Inns.
One of the travelodges I stayed in though was as depressing a dump as I've experienced.
Partly. Other resorts have managed to reinvent themselves, but the perception I have is that our local tourism trade took things for granted, didn't innovate and assumed there'd still be millions of overnight visitors to cash in on.
It's a very parochial place and despite all our problems and examples like this popping up periodically, as a town we still seem to maintain a collective belief that it's a great place to live/visit and "everywhere has its problems", with Blackpool just being hard done to.
http://www.propertysales.com/Listing/Burlington-Road-West-Bl...
For a 40 bed hotel!!
A chip van turns over more than that.
Blackpool's season for many overnight accommodation businesses has gone from April-November to just school holidays and major events.
The annual accounts/report must make for tragi-comical reading.