Dole
Dole-on-sea. It's not exactly a glorious epithet. But there's one thing the tourist board leaflets and brochures won't tell you about many British seaside resorts: the number of unemployed people who flock to places like Hastings or Eastbourne or Brighton.
The logic is, if you're signing on, then you might as well do it down by the seaside as in the urban heart of Sheffield or Newcastle or Glasgow.
Margate has suffered more than many resorts, not least because of the already high unemployment in the area. Together with port town Ramsgate and heritage town Broadstairs, it makes up Thanet, the South-east's only official development area outside London.
To understand the current difficulties, it is necessary to go back to the 1980s, a time when many local hotels were suffering particularly badly. A motion known as RT7 was passed by the local authority forbidding hotels to be converted to other uses in an attempt to protect them. Hotels that might otherwise have closed were forced to continue operating and standards plummeted.
Quantity not quality
"They ran up huge debts and the quality of hotels went down," says Neil McCollum, tourism and leisure development manager at Thanet council. "Some went bankrupt. It was partly a process of natural selection. When the number of rooms is greater than the number of users, there is bound to be a problem."
When the motion was eventually abandoned, a popular alternative use for redundant establishments took hold: conversion into hostels for the dole claimants and down-and-outs who were drawn to the area.
While this may be a convenient use of space, it hardly presents an appealing picture for holiday-makers or local residents. Now, almost inevitably, a further ruling from the council has made it harder to change use from hotel to hostel.
Despite this, Thanet, as a development area, receives plenty of grants. Thanet is where the "wonder drug" Viagra is made, courtesy of local pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Money, the greatest aphrodisiac of all, has been given to Thanet in plentiful amounts. Grants range from the Single Regeneration Budget and Regional Selective Assistance - both awarded by the Government - to European Regional Development Funding (ERDF) from the European Union. Of the latter's £14.4m, about 3.3% has gone to tourism projects.
Tourism is a major influence in Thanet, generating £110.3m each year. In 1996, tourists spent 2.5 million nights in the region - about 13% of all nights spent in Kent as a whole.
The impact of these grants is gradually making its mark. There is now a scheme to improve the promenade at Ramsgate and Margate by adding public art features and tidying up shop fronts. Further measures are planned at Broadstairs, a slightly more up-market resort.
Broadstairs can rely on its association with Charles Dickens - it is the location of Bleak House and where he wrote part of David Copperfield. Consequently, says McCollum, many of the town's independent hotels haven't suffered too badly.
One of the area's major problems is the lack of transport links with the rest of the UK, and particularly London. In short, it is cut off. This is not inviting, either for tourists or for investing businesses. A new, long-overdue dual carriageway is improving matters by connecting the bottom of the M2 with Thanet. "It will cut 20 minutes off the journey time to London," says David Ford of Thanet-based property agent Pearsons, which has many local hotels for sale.
Tunnel vision
The biggest communication change for Kent in recent years is, of course, the Channel Tunnel. But Margate is too far away to benefit much. Although inward investment marketing bodies like Locate in Kent will tell you the knock-on effects ripple out to the rest of Kent, Thanet has often been forgotten, says Ford. "We have lived a little bit in the tunnel's shadow."
But Thanet's assisted area status has offered big perks for companies to relocate there. Incentives have gradually brought firms in, and now three business parks are under development in the area. Corporate occupiers inevitably need quality hotel space for clients visiting from overseas, so there are now plans afoot to try to attract a four-star hotel with up to 200 rooms.
There is a significant business market - in 1996, business trips accounted for 19% of the overnight-stay market. The business market would help Thanet's hotel market even out some of its seasonal trends. Peak time is between Easter and autumn; after that, occupancy tails off rapidly. The last available set of figures for 1996 show that in Thanet, hotel occupancy was just 25% in January, but it went up to 79% in August. The yearly average was just 44%.
Margate's main tourism market is for the day-tripper. One of its biggest attractions is Dreamland, a revamped theme park which has altered its entrance policy so that wrist bands allow entry to all rides. There are also plans for a new factory-outlet shopping centre in the town.
One of Ramsgate's attractions is that it has more Georgian houses in the country than almost any other town; another is its sailing facilities. Says Ford: "It is a very pretty port to sail into, which actively promotes getting leisure into the harbour."
As with other UK seaside resorts, Thanet must look to the short-break market if it is to break even. One of the uses being found for ERDF money, says McCollum, is to encourage operators to join the "harmonised grading" system supported by the English Tourist Board. "It's a means of improving the premises and making themselves more attractive."
But it's not all doom and gloom. Margate's Longsdale Court Hotel is buying nearby properties in order to expand. And Whitbread is opening a 50-bedroom Travel Inn budget hotel - a £2.5m investment - at a site previously owned by the council next to the station.
