Exclusive: 450,000+ music fans set up camp at Butlins
The holiday resorts' redcoats will welcome close to half a million visitors to 58 festivals in 2016, including Rockaway Beach, Bloc and Giants of Rock
News By | 12 February 2016
Butlins will this year host 58 music festivals attended by over 450,000 people at its resorts in seaside towns Bognor Regis, Minehead and Skegness.
Founded in 1936 by Sir Billy Butlin to offer cheap and cheerful seaside holidays to cash-strapped Britons, Butlins and its famous redcoats were for many years synonymous with bingo, donkey rides, wheelbarrow races and knobbly knees competitions, and satirised as ‘Maplins’ in the BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!.
However, live music events now make up “35 per cent of [Butlins’] overall business”, Mike Godolphin, head of entertainment at Butlins’ corporate parent, Bourne Leisure, tells IQ. (Other Bourne Leisure businesses include caravan park operator Haven and the Warner Leisure chain of hotels.)
The three Butlins resorts – now unrecognisable compared to the austere ‘holiday camps’ of old following a…
You've used your free article this month
Create a free account to read 3 articles per month, or subscribe for unlimited access.
