Blackpool. Travel - Sights. Blackpool is a major seaside town and borough of Lancashire, North West England. The town is a unitary authority area, noted for its political autonomy, independent of Lancashire County Council. It is situated along England's northwest coast located by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, 17.5 miles (28.2 km) northwest of Preston, 27 miles (43 km) north of Liverpool, 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Bolton and 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Manchester. It has an estimated population of 142,100, and a population density that makes it the fourth most densely populated borough of England and Wales outside Greater London. 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. 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 have fallen from 17 million in 1992 to 10 million today. Similarly Pleasure Beach Blackpool was the country's most popular free attraction with 6 million visitors a year but has lost over a million visitors since 1998 and has recently introduced a £5 entrance fee. Today, many visitors stay for the weekend rather than for a week at a time. In July 2010, an independent survey of 4,500 members of the general public by consumer magazine Which? Holiday (now Which? Travel) found that Blackpool was the UK's favourite seaside resort, followed by Brighton, Whitby, Bournemouth and Scarborough. Blackpool has now improved the seawall and promenade, and Blackpool Tower has been revamped. In February 2012, a number of tourist attractions in Blackpool collaborated to produce the Blackpool Resort Pass which allows for discounted access in one ticket. The original pass included visits to Merlin Entertainments attractions and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. In February 2013, Marketing Blackpool, formerly the Tourism division of Blackpool Council, led the relaunch of the Blackpool Resort Pass which includes additional attractions including Blackpool Zoo, Sandcastle Waterpark and Blackpool Model Village and Gardens. Blackpool has a pioneering publicly owned Municipal wireless network Wi-Fi, which covers the entire town centre, promenade and beach front. Visitors can take a virtual tour of Blackpool, and full internet access is available. All images are either in the Public Domain or on Google images labeled for reuse. All music is credited to with kind permission to Kevin MacLeod and his website incompetech - Royalty free music - http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/ Text by wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool Subscribe to my channel here. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLS5aaWirfkp5PquUjrZgpQ Thanks.

• published: 12 Feb 2015
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