The midday sun is beating down in Bognor, and nowhere gleams more brightly than the shipshape exterior of the brand new Butlins Shoreline hotel. Except, perhaps, the bald pates of a troupe of Shaolin monks performing on the lawn outside.
"Oh-ho!" cries Oli, a Redcoat. "Here comes a good bit." One orange-robed monk crashes down a wooden pole on a co-monk's head. It snaps in two.
As a Redcoat of four years standing, Oli is one constant, a rock in the changing Butlins world. After 69 years as a byword for a certain type of British seaside tourism, Butlins has built its first resort hotel, which sits inside its Bognor Resis complex alongside the traditional chalets, or apartments as they are now officially known. It will, says Butlins, "herald a new era of contemporary and sophisticated accommodation". At a cost of £10m, the building, like a small cruise liner, has moored on to the Bognor seascape.
Inside it does, as promised, have some fairly decent mod cons: brightly painted rooms with leather chairs, floor to ceiling windows, widescreen TVs and DVDs, a games console for the kids and dads, phones, safes, smellies with French names in the bathroom. The basic Hook's Cabins sleep four for £79 a night; for £129 you can trade right up to a Nelson's Stateroom - a suite with the classic badge of a posh hotel, a branded bathrobe for guests to plunder. There is even a telescope to peruse the sunbathers on the beach or check up on the car park.
It's not at all what you expect from Butlins. But John Dunford, board director of owners Bourne Leisure says: "That doesn't offend me. It makes me pleased. We want to change the perception that Butlins is a 50s holiday camp and I think this hotel does that." The customers, he says, wanted big windows, sea views, a separate area for the kids. Now, by Billy, they've got it - at least, at this end of the resort.
"It's about evolution," says John Forward, hotel project director. "This is a very bold step. Accommodation matters very much to customers." This isn't, everyone today is keen to stress, about going upmarket, but offering choice. Bookings are already strong for this year's remaining holiday periods.
Enthusiasm levels seem mixed among the current clientele. Doris Spooner, of Newick, first came here over 30 years ago - "I'm 66 - clickety-click!" - and, watching the launch ceremony from the other side of the cordon, says she generally approves of the changes. "It's a lot nicer. But they used to have a big ballroom, which was nice." She laughs. "Bit old-fashioned now, isn't it?"
Mrs Spooner used to bring her son and daughter here as children, and is holidaying with them here this week - plus her husband, in-laws and three grandchildren. They have three apartments. "They're not luxurious, but you don't expect it here, do you?"
Less enamoured is Eileen Clarke, 73, of Hastings, who along with her sister and niece is dubiously scrutinising the menu board ("always chips, isn't it - chips with everything") outside Pinewood Studios restaurant. "We were a bit upset when we saw about the hotel on the one o'clock news - and getting rid of the shabby chalets! Well, they charge enough for them." Self-catering in the kitchenette is taking its toll; the onsite shop only does microwave meals, they reckon, and they are looking for a way past the iron fences to go shopping in town.
There is, alas, no shortcut through the perimeter fence - something that may grate on the eventual occupants of the Nelson's Staterooms on days when the pebble and sand beaches look particularly inviting, just a few tantalising metres below them. One couple have made it all the way along and out. Joyce Hollingsworth, with her husband Alan, 58, of Archway, London, says the hotel looks lovely, "a well grand job", but too expensive for their budget. At £229 for four days on half board, they are pleased with their meals and Butlins overall, though they prefer to get out on the beach than stay inside the resort. They don't like the room much (a Silver apartment, one up from standard.) "We only sleep there, just to lay our head down," says Alan. "A bit sparse," says Joyce, "and not as clean as you'd have indoors."
So far, the Shoreline is spotless. It's another landmark in the ad hoc mix at the Bognor resort: its sleek glass exterior at odds with the tent-like Skyline Pavilion, and the somewhat industrial units that house pubs and entertainment centres, and some occasionally gruesome 70s-style accommodation blocks. In fact, some of the most appealing buildings here are the long terraces of one-up, one-down, early rooms - small but perhaps ripe for conversion as gigi retro mini-flats should Butlins ever seriously try to woo the middle classes.
But these are at the other side of the resort, past the fairground, crazy golf, Ladbrokes and arcades, far from the sea-facing Shoreline. "This is an oasis of calm," says Forward. "There will always be fun at Butlins, but this is an oasis of calm." Fun these days includes not just the Shaolin monks from China (and they are genuine monks, says Forward) but an astonishingly acrobatic Kenyan dance act called Positive Culture, Russian circus performers and a DJing academy. What about the Redcoats? "They do very little entertainment now." Should they be jettisoned, someone asks? Forward says no, but doesn't appear - unlike me - shocked by the very idea.
The Redcoats, unaware of the questions being asked inside, are buoyant out on the lawn. They are of course jolly by profession, but still seem deeply enthusiastic about the hotel. Embear, a Redcoat in her first season, says, "It's something new. If you went abroad you'd go for a hotel. This makes it feel more like a holiday." Abi, a fellow newcomer, wearing a badge saying "In my world I'm Tinkerbell", agrees: "I think it'll be wicked."
It's certainly a nice spot. "This was a car park," says Oli, the veteran of Minehead and three seasons here. "I used to park there, where the Shaolin monks are." One of the monks is being held in the air on the tips of spears.
"I really like it here," says Embear.
"It's the future," agrees Oli.
Way to go
Butlins Shoreline hotel rooms can be booked online; room-only from £79 a night. Butlins Experience passes £15 a day for adults, £7.50 for children (peak season prices).
