Southern snobs never visit northern England

Travelodge report nonsense

The Daily Telegraph comments on a Travelodge report today which suggests that 4.9 million southerners, about 15 per cent, have never visited the north. Well if this is true it’s their miss!

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions shows that for 2006 (the last year for reliable figures) Blackpool Pleasure Beach was once again the most visited place in Britain, and that once you get away from London many sites in the north of England attracted millions of visitors. Places such as Chester Zoo, York Minster and the National Railway Museum, The Tate Liverpool and the World Museum, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Blackpool Tower, Newcastle’s Discovery Museum, Sunderland’s Museum and Winter Gardens, the Royal Armouries in Leeds, Castle Howard, Hadrian’s Wall and Housesteads, not to mention our own Roman Fort at Arbeia, South Shields attracted countless millions of tourists.

Then there are the major heritage sites to consider such as Durham Cathedral and Castle, Lindisfarne, St. Paul’s Jarrow, and St. Peter’s Monkwearmouth.

This evidence suggests that the Travelodge report is fanciful nonsense!

Then I must ask why the Hilton group decided to build a magnificent hotel at Gateshead if it didn’t see a demand for visitors? Why are there a clutch of top class four star hotels in Newcastle alone?

If I had the choice of visiting the Yorkshire Dales or the Derbyshire Peaks, as against a trip to London, Birmingham, or East Grindstead, which do you think this boy from South Shields would pick?

I think Travelodge are just waking up to the fact that southern visitors just don’t fancy using their motel style lodges that much, it’s absolute nonsense to suggest that southern visitors don’t visit the north, but perhaps they like higher standards of accommodation when they get here to match our legendary hospitality.

Another good argument for building a four star hotel on Gypsies Green!