EXCLUSIVE The town abandoned by tourists: How once 'booming' seaside resort is now an 'utter disgrace' packed with ghost hotels

Daily Mail​

8 hours ago

A once 'booming' seaside resort has become a ghost town with rotting hotels and an empty High Street.
Sandown was once the jewel in the crown of the Isle of Wight with its five-mile beach known for its soft, golden sands.
However, years of declining tourism have left an empty shell of holidays gone by, with buildings stood derelict on the seafront.
Gloomy hotels loom large over the promenade, some damaged by fire with smashed widows and burned out roofs.
In fact, nearly 82 per cent of residents in Sandown live within 500 metres of a derelict site.
Desperate residents are now calling for the council to take control of the abandoned hotels and knock them down.
Two large hotels, The Ocean Hotel and The Esplanade Hotel, sit in a prime location, with the beach just metres from their front door and the High Street behind, but the rotting buildings are now 'ruining the shop window' of the former tourist hotspot.
One frustrated local told MailOnline: 'There are all these people in need of housing, and yet you've got perfectly good buildings here going to waste.
'They could knock some of them down and put houses there instead.
'I'd rather see anything than what's there now. Someone needs to give certain people a kick up the backside.'
The Esplanade Hotel once hosted Jimi Hendrix when he stayed on the island before his iconic performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, just three weeks before his death.
In February this year, it was issued with a Section 215 notice, requiring the owners to fix the appearance within the next six months.
The Isle of Wight Council has also used emergency powers to try and secure The Ocean Hotel, after a spate of break-ins and arson attacks.
Further up the seafront, The Sandown Hotel, The St Moritz and Tarvis 2, also sit empty and unused.
The St Moritz and Tarvis 2 were badly damaged in a fire in 2018.
Next door, The Sandown Hotel has also closed due to a 'lack of demand for hotel accommodation' in the town.
The rise in budget holidays abroad over past decades has led more and more Brits to chose sunnier spots in Europe over the once-popular seaside town.
Rising costs of the Isle of Wight ferries, tourists say, have also made many unable to afford to visit the island.
Local parish and county councillor Ian Ward said the town has lost 28 per cent of the tourist trade even since the pandemic.
'Sandown was a booming tourist town. You'd come off the train and there were hordes of people. It would block the road, there were that many.
The St Moritz and Tarvis 2 hotels further up the seafront have also been left derelict
'Over the years, that's died away because people go abroad and all the rest of it. The Isle of Wight has lost a lot of tourism. Since COVID, we've lost 28 per cent of our tourists.
'People blame all sorts of reasons but the fact is, people have more money and more options now. One of the big complaints is ferry costs. Why would someone spend that money to come here when they could use it to go somewhere else?
The Ocean Hotel was purchased by a 'known scammer' according to Cllr Ian Ward.
'I used to go to school with a lad whose family owned the Ocean Hotel,' he said.
'They sold it because the tourist industry just died. It got bought by a scammer, who also bought two other hotels in Sandown.
'To get around planning permission, they said they were converting rooms into holiday apartments. They sold leases to 50-odd people and then disappeared.
'While that was happening, nothing could be done with the building because it was all tied up legally.
'The receiver eventually got the leaseholders to agree to a sale. You think, why would anyone buy a dying hotel, but someone did. We still don't know why.
'The council issued a Section 215 notice to get it tidied up and secured. They appealed four times and each time it went to a higher court.
'Between each appeal, it took months. People didn't see anything happening, but there was a lot going on behind the scenes.
'I've been to court four times myself to sit in and see what was going on. At one point, the judge told them, 'I will jail you if you lie to me.'
'They appealed again and ended up in front of the same judge.
'He said, 'I'm not hearing your appeal. I refuse it. Get on with it.' They've now got until mid-August to carry out the Section 215.
'The problem is, even if they do that, we've still got a derelict hotel. What do you do with it?
'The planning rules protect it for tourism use, but if there are no tourists, what's the point? That's something I'm trying to get changed now.
'A developer's not going to buy the Ocean. What are they going to do with it? We've got no industry.
'That's the problem, we're between a rock and a hard place.'
The line of disused hotels has also left one side of Sandown High Street looking bare, with shops also closing and leaving yet more empty buildings.
In one of the local charity shops Val Shirt, 82, and Marilyn Cotton, 74, say the look of the empty buildings have led to the town going downhill over the years.
Val has lived in Sandown for 33 years, while Marilyn moved away after 35 years.
Val said: 'To let it get to this stage, I think it is an utter disgrace.
'When my husband first came here, I had to describe everything to him because he was blind. He got such a beautiful picture in his head of what it was like. He'd be horrified now.'
Marilyn added: 'Sandown used to be beautiful, a lovely place. But I have moved now, it has just gone downhill over the years.
'My sons grew up here and they were horrified when they came back to visit. Not just the island - but Sandown in particular.'
Tourists taking a stroll up and down the seafront can often be seen pointing out the various disused buildings as they pass.
Harry Miselbach, 27, runs a water sports business on Sandown Beach, located just in front of the burnt out Ocean Hotel.
He said that the hotel is a hot topic among his customers when they visit the beach.
'The two main things people mention are 'where are the toilets' and then the hotel - it's not even about the beach,' Harry said.
'We've got a beautiful beach behind us. It's all about the derelict buildings. What happened? Why it's happened? How it's got this far? What are they going to do about it?
'We know the answer to all of the other questions except the last one.
'They need to do literally anything. Even if for now there was no plan and it's going to be too expensive to repair, knock it down and make it into a temporary car park. At least then something's happening with that land.
'Even if I didn't have the business here, it's frustrating.
'Sandown is a tourist town. You look at the pictures across the bay, the pier, all the way down here.
'In my opinion, it's one of the nicest beaches on the whole island. There's so much opportunity for it to be good. But at the moment, you look at the seafront and it's derelict. There's nothing to do.'
Tourists say the cost of the ferries are a major downside to visiting the island, and can cost more than £100 for those travelling by car.
Teresa Scott, from Dorking, Surrey, was visiting the Isle of Wight with her husband Clyde to scatter her father's ashes.
The pair both visited the island when they were younger, but have rarely visited since.
They said that the cost of travelling to Sandown, and to other British seaside towns, has become too expensive in comparison to cheap holidays overseas.
In the decades since their last visit, they have seen a huge change in the outlook of Sandown seafront.
Teresa, 57, said: 'You look at that big hotel over there, it would've been grand in its day, overlooking the sea. I vaguely remember it, actually.
'British tourism isn't the same now. People just don't come to the seaside like they used to. There's no money to put back into the area.
'They only have enough to scrape through the tourist season. That's it. They don't have the money to maintain anything.
'It cost us £111 to come over in the car from Southampton, imagine bringing a whole family. You see this when you arrive and it just puts you off.
'We could have flown to Barcelona for a similar price.'
Clyde, 59 added: 'It's sad, really. You go abroad now and they take pride in everything. But when these places were built, people didn't go abroad, they came to the British seaside.
'After the '70s, everything changed. We didn't keep up.
'I went on the pier and the fruit machine was themed 'On The Buses' - a sitcom from the 1970s, which would probably appeal to 10 per cent of the population.
'That says it all. This place is antiquated beyond belief.
'The only reason we ever come here is nostalgia. Not to enjoy myself, just for the memories. That's all that's left. Nostalgia.
'Seaside towns have been forgotten and the clock can never be turned back.'
Residents are also becoming despondent at the sorry state of the town.
Husband and wife Steve and Sue Bromley have lived in Sandown for 20 years and said it is 'disgusting now'.
Steve said: 'You see the tourists walking along the seafront and you can see they look towards the hotels instead of the beach.
'There are not so many tourists now, so I think they have to become residential.'
Sue added: 'Even if it was apartments, it would look better than what we have now.'
Young couple Will Sandy and Amy Britain, from Essex, were visiting the island for the first time with five-month-old young daughter.
Will, 27, said: 'They are pretty spectacular buildings. It looks like it could've been amazing 30 years ago, but now it's missing a roof. It's not great.
'As we were driving in, we said it—just the number of abandoned shops and empty buildings. It really ruins the atmosphere.
Amy, 27, added: 'Even where we're from in Essex, the coastal towns are the same. Every seaside town these days looks run-down and derelict.
'It definitely has an effect. It doesn't take away from the beach itself, but it's nice to have more around you. It affects the overall view, the feeling of the place.'
The Isle of Wight Council is attempting to take control of some of the buildings in order to rejuvenate the town, but it is a slow process.
Cllr Ward said: 'It's sad to see what's happened. Sandown was the Island's leading tourism town. When tourism fell away, we suffered the most.
'We need to decide what we want to be. A tourist town? Or go more residential. We need to make that decision.
'There's two more derelict hotels further down the seafront. One tried to get permission to turn into flats and it was refused. So we've got to sort the planning rules out.
'Otherwise, we'll just be sat here in another five years with the same issues.'
A spokesperson for the Isle of Wight Council said: 'The Isle of Wight Council recognises that Sandown is suffering from acute levels of dereliction.
'Many privately owned, prominent former hotel buildings on the seafront are at advanced stages of dereliction with the effect of causing visual blight on the townscape, suppressing investment, and most significantly damaging local people's health and well-being.
The Isle of Wight Council is working closely with its local and regional partners including the Building The Bay group to address this problem and the wider social and economic challenges facing the local area.
'Sandown is one of the priority focus areas for our Planning Enforcement team, with the instruction to use their powers to require landowners to improve the external appearance of their buildings in the interests of the neighbouring amenity.
Proactive planning enforcement action in the local area has increased significantly within the last year with tangible and long-lasting improvements already made. Emergency powers have also been utilised to secure derelict and unsafe buildings from unauthorised entry, eliminating anti-social behaviour and vandalism which was arising from within the unsecure premises.
'We are working with Sandown Town Council to make use of the government's High Street Rental Auction initiative to find new uses for empty buildings. All this work is wrapped around the Bay Area Place Plan, a dynamic collaboration between the Isle of Wight Council and The Bay's three town and parish councils to drive local regeneration.
'The council has also taken steps to address issues with its own building stock, securing £3m of government funding to restore the previously derelict Grade II listed Sandown Town Hall and bring it back into use for youth provision, which is nearing completion.'