Unless you’ve been hiding in a box this week, you’ll already know that Butlins
in Bognor Regis has opened a trendy design hotel on site.
Trendy. Design. Butlins. Bognor. It’s not often you’ll see those four words
together in one sentence. But, after all the predictable “Hi-de-Hi life”
gags have been cracked, what is Shoreline, Butlins’s new “contemporary and
sophisticated accommodation”, actually like to stay in? With kids in tow, we
checked in.
The £10m building has an art-deco look, all white concrete and curvy lines.
The 160 rooms are light and airy, with floor-to-ceiling windows. They’re
well designed, with big, comfy beds for the adults and neat bunk-bedded
areas for the kids (complete with PlayStations, naturally). They have
flatscreen TVs and fluffy dressing gowns, wood on the floors and inoffensive
abstract art on the walls.
Downstairs are a trendy-ish bar area and a restaurant, where the helpful staff
do their best to chuckle as the massed ranks of sticky-fingered toddlers
spray food over their plush red banquette seats. There are some neat little
touches, too, which combine a designer feel with the child-friendliness the
resort lives or dies by: the “squidgy steps” that change colour as you tread
on them; the padded green snake in reception, which the kids can clamber
over as you check in.
The overall effect is smart, modern, comfortable, even witty. Okay, it’s not
going to give the owners of Claridge’s any sleepless nights, but Shoreline
could certainly give your nearest Malmaison a run for its money — and it’s
friendlier and better value, too.
However, it has one overwhelming drawback. You can take the resort out of the
hotel, but you can’t take the hotel out of the resort. Step outside, and
you’re bang in the middle of Butlins, in all its pikey, Nike-clad glory.
From fruit machines to bingo, Burger King to fish’n’chips, redcoats to Bob
the Builder, it lives up to your expectations so completely that there’s
little point in describing it, save to say it looks like something
Hieronymus Bosch would dream up after too much cheese.
Which makes the placing of the Shoreline rather surreal. The camp and the
hotel seem to occupy two different worlds. Who on earth is going to want
both?
They’ve got an answer to that. “There are a lot of people who will take a week
in Tuscany or the south of France, then have a short break in Butlins,” said
the hotel project manager, Jim Forward.
Really? Well, if you’ve just come back from St Tropez and want to take him at
his word, here are a couple of tips: get one of the odd-numbered rooms on
the third or fourth floors (better views, less noise); then chuck on the
Burberry baseball cap, get the kids a burger, order a pint of lager and
throw yourself into it. Shoreline may be stylish, but this is still Butlins
in Bognor — know what we mean?
Standard rooms with double bed and two bunks from £49 a night in low season,
up to £129 for a suite in August (minimum stay three nights); 0870 241 1000, www.butlins.com/hotel
