Pictures show how Blackpool's once-proud hotels sit boarded up as a sad reminder of the seaside town's faded glory days

By Daily Mail Reporter
They were once the shimmering jewels of a popular holiday resort. But now the grand hotels of Blackpool mark its once-famous Promenade like a mouthful of decaying teeth.
Despite multi-million pound investments, and desperate efforts to revive its moribund tourist industry, the forgotten Lancashire resort's Golden Mile is a pallid reflection of its former self.
Many of the once-proud hotels and guest-houses overlooking the cold and often fierce Irish Sea are these days only frequented by rats, seagulls, vandals and the homeless.

In decline: The once-grand Warwick Hotel sits boarded up, MDF panels covering its windows and doors to deter vandals and intruders

Heated I-door Swi--i-g Poo-: The hotel once employed fifty members of staff to cater to the needs of visitors of the forgotten Lancashire resort

Eyesore: The empty hotel is emblematic of Blackpool's precipitous decline, evidenced by the empty street it sits on

Popular: At the height of its success, The Warwick Hotel, with its grand double-fronted vista and indoor heated pool, needed fifty staff to run

Old rates: The hotel is pictured in 1970, when guests could pay £3.75 per day for full board and £2.50 per day for bed and breakfast

At the height of its success, The Warwick Hotel, with its grand double-fronted vista and indoor heated pool, needed fifty staff to run. But now its doors and windows are boarded shut with MDF panels, its rooms lie unoccupied and its pool slowly festers.
Everywhere along the South Promenade air conditioning has given way to smashed windows and curtains fluttering in the wind. Dirt is slowly accumulating on The Royal Carlton; twice named Hotel Of The Year, the briny Blackpool air is now turning its steel window frames to rust.

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The Kimberly's latest guests, meanwhile, are a gang of squatters who find its peeling, fading decor a better standard than taking shelter beneath the piers during the cold winter months.
The smaller Southways is shut as is the Travellers Rest next door - a forlorn sign displaying its last-ditch attempt to improve trade with £15-a-night bed and breakfast.

Faded glory: Dirt accumulates on The Royal Carlton hotel, while its metal window frames slowly rust in the salty breeze

Crumbling: Ruined curtains hang out of long smashed windows revealing a gutted interior behind the disintegrating façade of the Palm Beach Hotel

Imposing ruin: The Abbeydale, a former care home on Blackpool's South Promenade, was shut after a scandal which unveiled a catalogue of failings

Forlorn: Rubbish lies heaped on the steps of the closed-down Travellers Rest guest-house, where a sign reveals its owners' last-ditch attempt to revive their business

The empty hotels and guest-houses of Blackpool are substantial buildings which in the past would have changed hands for £3million a time. Now they are worth around £500,000.
Ruined hoteliers desperate to sell mean commercial property agents have 150 hotels on their books in the Lancashire resort alone.
It's all a far cry from the town's glory days in the first half of the 20th Century, when it thrived as the resort of choice for the industrial workers of the North.

Pallid: The Kimberly's latest guests are a gang of squatters who find its peeling, fading décor a better standard than sleeping on the streets

Buyer's market: Ruined hoteliers desperate to sell mean commercial property agents have 150 hotels on their books in the Lancashire resort alone

Contrast: The Kimberley hotel is pictured in the 1960s, decades before squatters took over the once-grand building

Photographs from the era show tens of thousands of tourists crowding the beach and the promenade, while hotels, fast-food joints, souvenir shops and amusement arcades carried on a brisk trade.
Economic collapse set in with the arrival of cheap air travel in the Sixties, when those working class Britons suddenly found Spain's sun-soaked Costas within their reach.

Even now Blackpool's decline remains precipitous, with the numbers of visitors to the town almost halving since 1992.

Not open for business: The un-boarded windows of these Blackpool properties reveal the ruin they have been left inside

Lord help us: Another grand hotel is a mere shadow of its previous self, its car park only visited by a skip full of the detritus of its glory days

Faded: Blackpool enjoyed its hey day in the early 20th Century but it never recovered from the introduction of cheaper air travel in the Sixties

Empty: A soggy discarded mattress lies at the entrance to the Cerena Hotel where, judging by the lame graffiti, even the vandals appear to have given up hope

Nevertheless, the town's nostalgic draw remains keeps it firmly embedded in British hearts. A 2010 Which? survey found it remained the country's favourite resort, beating trendy Brighton into second place and picturesque Whitby to third.
Now Blackpool's remaining traders have launched a urgent call for action to attack the growing blight of empty buildings.
Irfan Mahmood, owner of The Beach Hotel, said: 'The empty buildings have an effect on your business they give the area a bad reputation.'
Claire Smith, chairman of the Stay Blackpool hoteliers association, added: 'The town's image is suffering because of scruffy boarded up properties.'
'There are now so many boarded up hotels.Something has to be done because the Promenade is the visitors' view of Blackpool.'

Remnants of the past: The Blackpool Tower rises in the background, overlooking streets of closed guest-houses and lonely residential properties

Forgotten: A battered door has been reinforced to stop trespassers getting into the Southways hotel. Right, this hotel no longer even has a name to remind it of its past

Another seafront trader, who preferred to remain unnamed, invested £500,000 in a hotel which had already been empty for five years.
He said: 'I wanted to turn it into luxury apartments and invest another £250,000 into the place but the council said I would not get planning permission to change it from a hotel.'
'They need to be more flexible or more properties will become boarded eyesores.'

Glory days: Tourists wander past Blackpool's Latin Quarter Theatre, whose owner was in 1951 fined for putting on a show that involved fully naked women

Thousands cram onto the pleasure beach on August Bank Holiday in the Thirties: Blackpool was once the resort of choice for the North's industrial workers

Nostalgia: Holidaymakers mill around Blackpool's amusement part in a picture taken in 1935, when the resort was at the height of its popularity

Cooling off: Crowds of people cooling off in a swimming pool on a hot day in Blackpool in July 1944

Crowded: This photograph from the 1920s shows tens of thousands of tourists crowding the beach and the promenade in Blackpool

Glory: Meanwhile, hotels, fast-food joints, souvenir shops and amusement arcades carried on a brisk trade. Left, an advert from 1962, and right, Blackpool promenade

Enjoying a bit of sun: Crowds roam the beach and boardwalk on a summer's day at Blackpool in 1935

Tourism chairman of the local council Coun Graham Cain said: 'We are doing what we can in a difficult financial climate.
We have taken over some old guest-houses and turned them into family homes but buying up disused hotel stock is an expensive business.'
'We do work with owners to try and keep buildings aesthetically pleasing as possible.'