PLEASURE RESORTS : How to Develop them.—Of recent years a great business has sprung up in developing popular resorts. Indeed, the interest has become such a large one that it is worth while indicating the machinery on which these organisations are run. In the old days, a popular seaside resort or inland spa secured patronage largely by accident. It had a certain amount of natural beauty, or one or two natural attractions such as a fine sea front, a curative spring, or picturesque surrounding country, and people got into the habit of going to any one particular resort owing to the recommendations of friends. The animal holiday, the health cure out of doors, and similar modern developments of social life, had not been organised to the extent they are to-day, and the business available for popular pleasure grounds was not nearly so large. That numbers of people went down each year was due to one or two fortunate circumstances—a good railway service, the recommendation of a fashionable physician, or some local association which fired the public imagination ; and once the public developed the habit of visiting these towns, the number of visitors increased without any particular effort on the part of the towns themselves.
To-day it is realised that this holiday public and the people travelling in search of health, represent a huge source of revenue to a town from the business point of view, and the resort which makes the popular appeal is not content to allow its claims to be brought before the public by a series of fortuitous accidents. The change from the careless haphazard method of the old days to the business methods of to-day was brought about by the definite aggressive policy of such centres as Blackpool and the Isle of Man. Blackpool, at the door of a huge industrial population in Lancashire and Yorkshire, early in its career saw the advantage of bringing the attractions of the town before the people who were likely to use it as a pleasure ground. It was the first borough to institute a system of municipal advertising ; to artificially develop its resources and make the town additionally attractive; and the town was amongst the first of pleasure resorts to offer every kind of assistance to make the visit of the likely holiday maker pleasant. In those days the local authority had no legal right to levy on the inhabitants for the purpose of developing the town from the advertising point of view. To-day this has been altered, and as a result most towns
have a fund available for the purpose of bringing their attractions before the travelling public.
The up-to-date seaside resort, which is bent on making its resources known, now advertises in very much the same manner as a business corpora tion marketing a proprietary article. It allocates each year a certain sum of money for advertising purposes, and in most cases the major part of this money is devoted to issuing posters which are largely distributed in and about railway stations, though in some cases they also appear on the provincial hoardings. The rest of the money allotted for the purpose is spent on the preparation of suitable booklet matter, which usually includes a list of lodging-houses, apartments and hotels, with other useful local information of the same type. An inquiry office is maintained within the borough itself, and all inquiries made are dealt with and booklet matter is supplied from this centre. In one or two cases, notably in Blackpool and Douglas, Isle of Man, it has been found necessary to open up a London office, where operations may be conducted in the centre of the advertising field, and inquiries as to the place itself are answered from here with suitable descriptive publications.
Most seaside advertising schemes have been carried out in conjunction with railway companies on a mutual arrangement, it being argued that both the railway company and the town Lenefit by the stimulation of traffic to any particular locality. It would seem, however, that the modern tendency is to put the business organisation of the seaside town on a wider basis. Instead, nowadays, of confining advertising to railway stations and carriages by poster and photograph, the bigger seaside towns are more and more tending to control their own publicity and secure a wider field. Recent campaigns have used the newspapers to popularise various localities, the advertising being written from the point of view of the town rather than from the point of view of the railway company having access to it. Such advertising features, with attractive views, make positive assertions relating to the character of the resort and invite inquiry in very much the same way as the advertising trader does. When inquiries are brought in by this means, they are answered with the same thoroughness with which the trader answers inquiries from his publicity.