Blackpool’s £1M investment to attract more tourists following the lifting of Covid restrictions has been a towering success – data showing that the town enjoying an amazing 75% increase in visitor footfall than before the pandemic. More than 17 million people visited the Promenade from September to December in 2021, compared with 10 million in the same three months in 2019. Attractions in Blackpool drew 12 million visitors in September to December 2021, compared with 9 million two years earlier.
Stay Blackpool’s Ian White said, ‘It was brilliant to see the numbers of people around and such a happy atmosphere.’
And the future looks bright as visitors to the VisitBlackpool website in December 2021 were more than triple the number in December 2019.
Blackpool Council Leader Lynn Williams said, ‘We witnessed extraordinary volumes of people coming over the final part of the year. We were determined to have a tourism recovery plan of sufficient scale to give businesses the best sense of recouping bosses incurred over two years of Covid. The overall results are a total vindication of our investment. The Christmas By The Sea event gave us the best Christmas visitor numbers we have seen in living memory.’
Once again, this year’s illuminations season will be extended by two months, running from September 2nd 2022 to January 2nd 2023.
