‘I purchased 18-bedroom lodge for £60k in Brit seaside city the place pints value £1.80’

A savvy lad has bagged himself an 18-bedroom hotel for just over £60,000 in an iconic Brit seaside resort.

With Blackpool’s once glorious holiday hotels now seemingly forgotten and left to gather dust, Duncan Ridgley believes there’s scope for transformation.

In a chat with YouTuber Wandering Turnip, Duncan recalled: “I was living in the Sahara Desert, and had a certain amount of money and so I spent quite a bit of time researching the whole of the UK on where’s the best place to set up a hotel for digital nomads.”

Not one to miss a golden opportunity, he shared how the vast property located on Blackpool Beach seems perfect. Noting its conveniences, he added: “There’s a pub up the road you can get a pint for £1.80, my neighbour runs a burger bar across the street, and he charges a quid for a burger, so you can have a night out for a fiver.”

The fact that more folks than ever – the so-called ‘Digital Nomads’ who work remotely and need nothing more than a strong internet connection – signals prosperous times for Duncan’s venture. He zeroed in on Blackpool due to its favourable blend of low cost of living balanced with its distinctive appeal.

Explaining his choice, Duncan said: “Blackpool massively came up on the radar as it was the most cost-effective place in the UK. You have everything you need within a 15-minute walk from here but this is the cheapest cost of living town in the UK.”

Blackpool was a holiday hotspot in the first half of the 20th Century, attracting hordes of factory workers from Lancashire and beyond to what was then the UK’s top seaside resort. In the early 1950s, as many as 17 million tourists flocked to buy Kiss-Me-Quick Hats and gawk at the town’s famous illuminations.

However, with cheap foreign travel enticing more Brits to places like Benidorm and Faliraki, Blackpool’s grand hotels lost their charm. Duncan is among several investors aiming to revamp them for a new era.

He shared how he started his “digital nomad” business in one of Blackpool’s hotels. He said: “I had a budget of about £100,000. There was a shed in the middle of nowhere that was a scout hut but like my guests were going to say ‘What’s there to do? ‘”.

“Then this place came up at an auction and I thought it was too good to be true. It was advertised as £45k at auction. It was an 18-bedroom hotel. I thought ‘There’s got to be a catch,’ but I ended up paying £61,000 for it.”

With some modernisation and crucially, fast broadband connection, the former holiday hotel is now a live-work space for people from as far away as Japan. They come for an extended stay, working remotely from their offices while savouring stunning sea views from their balcony windows.

Amid countless tales of Britain’s cities and high streets falling into decline due to the rise of out-of-town superstores and online retailers, this is a rare and uplifting example of successful regeneration.

Duncan has his sights set on the £450,000 Grand Hotel, situated right on the seafront with its 62 bedrooms. He notes, “That’s the price of a bungalow in the Lake District.”