It’s a balmy afternoon in Southport.
Families stroll down the promenade, eating from polystyrene trays of steaming-hot chips as children queue for the magnificent 19th-century carousel outside the iconic facade of Silcock’s Funland. It’s the picture-perfect summer's day, with locals and holiday makers alike basking in the gloriously sun-soaked surroundings.
It's a welcome sight after two years of unprecedented, pandemic-induced hardship, where the Liverpool City region saw visitor numbers plummet by more than 60%. Though the deepening cost of living crisis looms like an ominous cloud on the horizon, one seaside staple - the humble B&B- is profiting from a staycation boom that is expected to bring an estimated £15.5billion to the UK economy this year.
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“During covid, I think we were open for about six weeks out of 14 months, but this year it’s been fab,” said Michelle Michie, who runs The Heidi Bed & Breakfast on Bold Street with husband Al.
“The business is all back and it’s as if nothing has happened. Since the pandemic, there’s been a big increase in people looking for free cancellations, understandably, so we’ve all had to change our cancellation policies. But really the season has been very good and I think more people are looking to go on holiday in the UK.”
Michelle and Al opened The Heidi six years ago. A quintessential northern B&B, there’s a sense of warmth that radiates from every fibre of the six-bedroom guest house, and that air of homely familiarity has seen the Michies rack up a loyal clientele of regular visitors.
“I have a lot of repeat customers,” Michelle said. “A lot of them come with their kids who grow up year on year and then suddenly you’re invited to their 18th or engagement. I have some customers that have become really close friends which is lovely.
“I’ve received hundreds of thank you cards over the years and our ethos is treat it like your own home. It's our home too, and I think people respect that because we never have trouble.”
Building up that staunchly reliable client base is one of the keys to longevity in the B&B industry, agrees Caroline Grogan, who’s been running the neighbouring Adelphi Guest House for the past 23 years.
“I’d say the majority of my guests are regulars now,” Caroline said. “A lot of people come here for the events, like the air show, but more so a lot of regulars.
"It's great. I have a French family who’ve been coming to me for 22 years. They come for the same two days every single year and when their little girl first came I had to put a cot up for her and now she’s a grown woman off doing fabulous things.
“I’ve got a family who come six times a year, if not more, just to go walking all along the coast.”
She added: “Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been extremely busy. We’ve had a lot more families this year and people having longer stays. I think it’s helped having people being a bit wary of going abroad and things like that.”
Despite the loosening of coronavirus restrictions in a number of international destinations, 77% of Brits are expected to holiday in the UK this year, according to Sykes Holiday Cottages’ annual Staycation Index.
Caroline said: “When people come to Southport now, this is their main holiday instead of it being a couple of days here or there. They’re still sceptical about going abroad so they come here and say ‘let’s have a full week’s holiday’ and the majority of them love it here.”
Though the protracted decline of seaside towns has been well documented, there’s a sense of quiet optimism about Southport’s future. Last year, Southport was successful in receiving almost £40m from the Government as part of its Town Deal fund.
The £37.5m sum is one of the largest Town Deals that the government has agreed nationally across 101 towns, with the new Marine Lake Events Centre forecast to attract more than half a million visitors to Southport year on year, generating an annual £18 million for the local economy.
“The new events centre is going to be an absolute wow,” Caroline said. “When I first arrived there used to be about 25 conferences a year which kept you going through the winter months but that's dwindled down, so it's really exciting.”
And it’s not just in Southport that things seem to be looking up for the hospitality sector. The latest independent research commissioned by Growth Platform – Liverpool City Region Growth Company- has shown that although the pandemic continued to hugely affect tourism last year – the seeds for a steady recovery have been sown.
A wave of local and national lockdowns saw visitor numbers in the city region drop from 66.27m in 2019 to 26.14m in 2020, but figures last year rose again to 42.15m. Other data shows hotel occupancy was much improved from the 38.3% in 2020 to 55.2% in 2021, although some way off the 2019 figure of 78.4%.
Laura Pye, Chair of the Visitor Economy Board for the city region, said: “It has been wonderful seeing visitors back on our streets, enjoying the incredible array of attractions Liverpool City Region has to offer.
“There is still work to be done to get back to our pre-pandemic numbers but it is very encouraging to see these ‘green shoots’ in the latest data and we should be really proud of the ingenuity and creativity we have within the region that have got us to this point and will keep the momentum of growth going.”
Half an hour from Southport’s bustling B&B scene, business is also booming at one of the region’s most breathtaking guest houses on Beach Lawn in Waterloo. Tucked away, just off Marine Crescent - a chocolate-box terrace of stunning 19th-century houses in rainbow-coloured hues-is Aberley House.
Built in 1866, the sprawling Victorian villa sits on a stretch of land formerly owned by the Ismay family, who were proprietors of the White Star Line shipping company of Titanic infamy. With stunning views over Crosby beach and coastal park, number 14 is now a guest house owned by Jonathan Farrer.
With a background in interior design, Jonathan swapped his fast-paced London life for the tranquillity of the Merseyside coast after his father fell ill in 2016.
He said: “My dad lived in Garston and started getting ill in 2016 so I was up from London every month to look after him. I wound up my business and cared for him for about a year.
"We had been planning to move about 50 miles outside of London when we retired, but all the time we were looking, we kept coming up to Liverpool and just looking at the houses.
“One day we came to Crosby and walked all the way down the beach. We came up over these dunes and just saw this terrace of houses and we were absolutely knocked out by it. It was love at first sight. It’s just so beautiful.
“It wasn’t planned at all that we would buy it. It was just we drove past a couple of times and then we saw a for sale sign and it just all happened.”
After opening its doors in 2019, Aberley House had to weather the financial storms of the past two years, but business is now better than ever, with the Farrers having played host to high-profile guests such as sculptor Sir Anthony Gormley and TV presenter Gabby Logan, as well putting up film crews for actress Rebel Wilson's new blockbuster, which was shot in the region last year.
“The nice thing about B&Bs is you chat to the guests and they all have their own stories to tell,” Jonathan said.
“We’ve had people stay for weddings and to go cycling. We had a couple of retired people who were walking around Great Britain on the coastal paths. They’d started in Lyme Regis and had gone all the way up around Wales to us and then carried on up to Scotland which I think was about 5,000 miles.
"They were walking about 100 miles a week and staying in B&Bs every night which was going to take them about a year but it was a real retirement project.”
Despite business being on the up for many B&Bs, soaring energy costs and a lack of disposable income are the latest existential threats to the future of these bastions of British holiday culture.
“It's massive,” Jonathan said. “When we get the next increase in energy prices, my basic monthly costs will have gone up over 50% which is a substantial amount of money.
"So far, we’ve held our prices but from October we’re putting up our prices because we just need to cover costs. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life and I’ve been around a long time.
“Some people are going to be in so much trouble. This is a big house which needs insulation. I’ve got 35 windows I need to replace but I just can’t do it because it will cost about £100,000 as they’re all listed buildings.”
While the B&Bs back in Southport may be more modestly sized, the hike in the cost of energy and supplies isn’t any less astronomical.
Caroline said: “The cost of things has been going up a lot. I haven’t raised my prices yet but I think it's going to have to be looked at. The cost of bills and food is hurting us a bit but we’re getting the people in which is covering the cost at the moment.”
“It's about being more cautious when you’re cleaning the rooms and making sure the plugs are turned off - just things like that.”
This week, economic advisor Sacha Lord said the hospitality sector is in “crisis mode”, with the perfect storm of the cost of living crisis and rising inflation making things “worse than the pandemic” for those working in the industry.
But as the sun beats down on Southport promenade, there’s little sign of crisis here, and Merseyside’s B&Bs - which have weathered so many storms - are, at least for now, continuing to thrive.
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