Camping In Comfort

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31984, 10 May 1969, Page 5

Camping In Comfort

With the opening of his first holiday camp at Skegness, Norfolk, Sir BiUy Butlin revolutionised the pattern of the British holiday. This year 200,000 holidaymakers will choose to spend 14 days or more *t one of his holiday camps. Each family will have its own chalet, with food and entertainment included in the cost. InaBB.C. broadcast, David Lloyd said that Sir Billy’s rise to riches was one of the most extraordinary British business could provide. As William Butlin he left Canada in 1921 to arrive in Britain with money to last him a week. His first job was in a fair-ground, and in a few years he set up as his own fair-ground boss. One summer, while work* ing in the north of England, with tne - usual British seaside holiday; that it depended completely on the vagaries of the weather. Unless holidaymakers could afford to stay in hotels, rain meant a ruined holiday: for the landlandies of the seaside boarding houses provided only bed and breakfast, and wanted visitors out of the house during the day. So he opened his first holiday camp, and, to quote Sir Billy: “I planned my camps on the thermostat principle—as soon as the temperature went down outside, the temperature of social activities rose inside!”