Plans for multi-million pound hotel in Scarborough will 'hurt' local accommodation providers
It's after the Borough Council's cabinet approved the sale of the former indoor swimming pool in the North Bay
A bed and breakfast owner in Scarborough says plans for a potential £15 million hotel will hurt small, local businesses.
It is after the Borough Council's cabinet approved the sale of the former indoor swimming pool in the North Bay.
The authority says the four-star 100-bedroom hotel could bring jobs, apprenticeships and up to half a million worth of purchases a year 'within the local supply chain'.
Tony Bates runs Hotel Ellenby in Scarborough and said: "I don't understand for the life of me why we need another hotel. If you look on a well known website for availability tonight, there's round about 30 hotels and one of them is an existing four-star hotel and I can see five different types of rooms, so here we are with school holidays, all these things going on with all this capacity and hotels.
"One of the big chains has opened a hotel with 100-rooms, they've been granted an extension to their one on the South Bay with an extra 90 rooms so if you add those three together, that's about 300 extra rooms. If you said roughly seven bedrooms in the guesthouses and hotels, that means 40 or so will disappear because there isn't the demand.
"Since we've been here, which is just under two years, just around where we are five hotels have closed and they've gone for apartments. I think part of the fabric of Scarborough is the smaller hotel. It's very important that some of us exist stuff still and already one a few doors up has closed its doors about a month ago.
"We are a seasonal business. We need things to bring people here all year. It's great now, we're busy, but despite that 30 different places tonight you could get rooms. It looks very different here in October and November, where are the all-year round attractions? I think it needs a bit of innovation.
"The big chains are coming in the hotel market and the big boys and all that's doing is pushing out the independents, which can't be a good, long term strategy because we should be supporting local. Also with seasonal work, it's great to provide these jobs but there's only so many seasonal workers we can find."