MANCHESTER 08
Bairdstravel headed down to Manchester for the UEFA CUP FINAL Glasgow Rangers v Zenit St Petersburg
Stayed in Blackpool then headed through to Manchester for the day of the match.
Blackpool is heavily dependent on tourism. In what is often regarded as its heyday (1900-1950), Blackpool thrived as the factory workers of northern England took their annual holidays there en masse. Any photograph from that era shows crowds of tourists on the beach and promenade. Blackpool was also a preferred destination of visitors from Glasgow and remains so to this day. Reputedly, the town still has more hotel and B&B beds than the whole of Portugal. The town went into decline when cheap air travel arrived in the 1960s and the same workers decamped to the Mediterranean coastal resorts due to competitive prices and the more reliable weather. Today Blackpool remains the most popular seaside resort in the UK, however the town has suffered a serious drop in numbers of visitors which has fallen from 17 million in 1992 to 10 million today. Similarly Pleasure Beach Blackpool remains the country's most popular free attraction with 6 million visitors a year but has lost over a million visitors since 1998. Today, many visitors stay for the weekend rather than for a week at a time.