Why ours is the real Beatles hotel

Mar 26 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL'S soon-to-open Hard Day’s Night hotel won’t be the first Beatles-themed establishment to open, as Mike Chapple discovered on a trip to Blackpool

THE Hard Days Night Hotel has already captured the imagination of Beatles fans worldwide.

The website for the 110-room, £18m the hotel on the corner of Mathew Street and North John Street is receiving an average 6000 hits a day despite the fact that bookings won't be taken until May and its doors are not scheduled to open until the end of October.

"This is going to be a four star plus experience." says Bill Heckle manager of the Cavern's operators Cabern City Tours who conceived the idea for the HDN hotel over a decade ago. "People expecting the kiss me quick hat type of hotel are going to be surprised, this is going to be one at the very top end of the market."

Which is all good news for Liverpool's growing reputation for providing continental standard hotels capable of satisfying  the demands of the  average American and Japanese tourist whose appetite for the  Fab Four  is  insatiable.

But what's wrong with  that kiss me quick hotel experience especially when it combines the Beatles and the quickie kiss capital of the world Blackpool all in one package? Add the extra ingredient of seventeen quid a night for bed and breakfast - astonishingly cheap even for the off season - it's got to be worth checking out and  checking  in.

So say Hello Goodbye to the Strawberry Fields Hotel in Palatine Road, Blackpool.

Run by Pete Langstone and his partner Trisha Brown regular Daily Post readers will remember a recent story about their apparent irritation about Hard Days Night's claim to being the first Beatles themed  hotel when their own had  been open for nearly three years.

But more of that later.

For now let's take a peep into the  past and the traditional  intrinsic attraction that the two Pools have for each other especially when viewed in the context of how much the seaside town had a part to play in the Beatles' career.

In the summer months between  1963 and summer 1965 the Beatles  played Blackpool a number of times with gigs split between the ABC theatre, the Queens Theatre and the Opera House.

Two of them were pivotal in their success.