Hotel Hit Squad: The Boulevard Hotel in Blackpool is the ideal place for family fun – and it’s a stag and hen-free zone
Should your family be anything at all like mine, the following question will divide it neatly into two camps with diametrically and loudly opposed reactions… Fancy staying in a hotel positioned directly underneath the UK’s tallest rollercoaster?
The Big One – Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s iconic 235ft vomit-comet – looms over the newly opened Boulevard Hotel. It is so close that you can see the look of horror on riders’ g-force-flung faces as it rattles past the (thankfully, thickly glazed) windows of some bedrooms. Walk out of its box-fresh, glossy lobby and you sink into a surround-soundscape of screams.
The Boulevard is owned by Amanda Thompson, whose family have owned the Pleasure Beach for four generations. Her presence lingers around the place like a very polished poltergeist.
Awestruck staff whisper about the military precision with which she planned the light fittings (from legendary local designer Chelsom) and the soft furnishings (handmade down the road by Tetrad and clothed in Designers Guild).
Because while the Boulevard is a Blackpool business to its core, it is also something slightly new in a town that – legend has it – squeezes 300 hotels and b&bs into each square mile. Every last whiff of the cheap and cheerful and the naughty seaside knees-up has been exorcised.
In their place: grown-up grey shades and reed-diffused scents that hope to attract business people to its extensive conference facilities, families to its interconnecting family rooms, couples to the child-free suites on the floors above… everyone, in fact, except for the town’s traditional demographic of hen and stag parties. ("The hotel has a policy to not accept single-sex groups larger than three rooms.")
If there’s a dissonance between the brash theme park behind and this glamorous atmosphere, none of the other guests seems to notice. The slight air of discordance, the holiday-season suspension of disbelief, is what gives Blackpool its magic. Sure, the paint is peeling from Pleasure Beach rides, battered by wind and rain. But name me another theme park where you can get a tub of cockles from the old-school 'oyster and champagne' concessions dotted around?
Yes, some of the legendary illuminations – a yearly light show that lines the promenade – are really just tatty Christmas decorations. But look into your five-year-old’s eyes as she dances in front of the dazzling light show projected on to the Tower Ballroom and try to remain unmoved.
My father, raised not far away, remembers being bundled into a sleeping bag at the same age, and then into the back of the car to drive along the illuminations. Times may have changed but, even today, nowhere quite replicates their special alchemy.
That said: Saturday nights in Blackpool are colourful in more ways than one. It is a relief to board a tram back to the Boulevard (right on the promenade, but a 10-minute ride from the rowdy action), and be met by a security man with several teeth missing from his broad smile.
If only supper were as welcoming. Sadly, the hotel’s comfortable and, in fact, quite chic restaurant has its own teething problems. Service is patchy. Several orders were delivered to the wrong tables. Glasses and side plates were left uncleared. The food, while decent, could use an injection of flavour. My daughter’s meal is a study in beige – beige chips, beige-processed chicken goujons and beige baby corn.
There are a couple of disappointments in our room, too. While suites are kitted out with Nespresso machines, family rooms have sad sachets of instant coffee. While there are piles of fluffy towels in our pristine, pretend-marble bathroom, there are no robes.
• Another Place wows with sublime lake scenery, strong eco-credentials – and a lovely oat milk latte
Oddly, injections of colourful humour (a wooden Union Jack bedhead, and a bedspread daubed in bright strokes like an artist’s palette) are reserved for the adult bedroom, while the children’s bunk-bed space is styled in business-suit grey, gunmetal-black, and a kind of cabernet sauvignon. But look, I’m quibbling
The staff are record-breakingly friendly. The fabrics and furnishings are of surprisingly high quality, the art on display unexpectedly witty. And the location is perfect. Sea-facing rooms look out directly on to an uninterrupted expanse of mardy water. Each morning, a VIP entrance takes hotel guests directly into the Pleasure Beach, skirting long queues.
The Boulevard is, without question, the very best place to stay should you take your children to Blackpool. And honestly, no one could be more surprised than I to find myself recommending that you really should.
Family rooms cost from £150, including breakfast, or from £240 including passes for the Pleasure Beach.
Read the full review: Boulevard Hotel
