The Rise of the Gay Hotels
Blackpool has always been a guest-house town. When the gay scene arrived, the landladies' terraces north of the town centre became something new: a whole neighbourhood of hotels where gay visitors could book a room without having to explain themselves.
A town of guest houses
Blackpool's holiday trade was built on the boarding house. Through the late Victorian and twentieth-century boom, thousands of terraced homes in the streets behind the Promenade took in visitors for the summer, the Illuminations and the wakes weeks of the mill towns. Some catered for families, some for coach parties, and some, like the theatrical digs Basil Newby's parents ran, specialised in performers on summer-season contracts.
For gay visitors in the decades before the law changed, booking a double room with a same-sex partner in one of these places meant taking a risk. A landlady could refuse you, throw you out or worse. That is the gap the gay hotels filled.
After the Flamingo
When Basil Newby opened the Flamingo on Talbot Road in 1979, there were, by his account, no gay hotels in Blackpool at all. The club changed that. It drew people from all over Britain, many of whom arrived at Blackpool North station across the road and needed somewhere to sleep. Newby has said plainly that the hotels followed the Flamingo, not the other way round.
The streets that filled up were the obvious ones: the terraces between North station and the sea, a few minutes' walk from the club. Lord Street, High Street, Dickson Road, Cocker Street and the little streets around them had plenty of tired boarding houses whose owners were ready to try a new market. Over the following decades more and more of them became gay-run or openly gay-friendly. By the 2000s the town was known as the gay capital of the north, and the density of gay accommodation in those few blocks was a big part of the reason.
What made a Blackpool gay hotel
Blackpool's gay hotels developed a style of their own. Many had a small residents' bar, often open late, which turned the hotel into a social space as much as a place to sleep. Guests drank there before heading out to the clubs and came back to carry on afterwards. Some opened their bars to the public, which blurred the line between hotel and pub.
Some hotels were men-only, and a few were frankly geared to sex as well as sleep, with membership rules for the length of a guest's stay. Others were mixed, welcoming lesbians, gay couples and straight friends alike. Owners were often couples who had moved to the coast to run a business together, and the welcome was famously personal.
The hotels and bars fed each other. When the first Blackpool Pride took place in 2006, the wrestling ring at the main stage was borrowed from the Trades hotel on Lord Street, a small detail that says a lot about how closely the hotels were woven into the scene.
The hotels that remain
A walk around the quarter today still takes you past a remarkable concentration of LGBTQ+ accommodation. A few stand out for how well they show the old model.
- Trades on Lord Street spans several joined townhouses and is one of the last examples in Britain of the large, men-only, sex-positive gay hotel that was once common in seaside resorts. Its residents' bar is known for keeping very late hours.
- Mardi Gras on Lord Street combines a public bar with hotel rooms, and its sister guest house nearby offers more upmarket suites.
- Peek-a-Booze on Dickson Road and Evanescent on Cocker Street both follow the bar-downstairs, rooms-upstairs pattern.
- DeLovely on Lord Street, gay-owned with themed rooms, opened its cocktail bar to the public in 2024.
- Pride Lodge on High Street describes itself as gay-mixed rather than men-only and is a short walk from the Queen Street bars.
Others have marketed themselves to gay men and lesbians for many years, and the town's official tourism listings now tag dozens of places to stay, from tiny guest houses to big Promenade hotels, as LGBTQ+-welcoming.
Hoteliers organise
The hotel owners have also organised. The hoteliers' group BAGS was one of the partners Blackpool Council worked with in 2023 when it drew up plans to celebrate the LGBTQ+ quarter, alongside Pride, the sexual health charity Renaissance and the North Shore business group. Its involvement reflects how much of the quarter's character comes from the people who run its guest houses.
Changing times
Like every part of Blackpool's tourism economy, the gay hotels have had their ups and downs. Some hotels have closed or changed hands, and others have upgraded to boutique rooms and adults-only stays.
In June 2026 the owners of Lee & Chris' Belvedere Hotel on Dickson Road, long popular with LGBTQ+ guests, announced that they were putting it up for sale after more than five years, saying it had been the greatest joy of their working lives. They said its Renaissance bar would close at the end of 2026. Stories like that are a reminder that each of these hotels is someone's labour of love, and that the quarter keeps changing.
Yet the model has proved resilient. Pride weekend and the Illuminations still fill the quarter, the council's Be You programme has brought new lighting, CCTV and rainbow crossings to Lord Street and Dickson Road, and the count of LGBTQ+ venues in the area has gone up rather than down.
Help us tell this story
There is surprisingly little written down about Blackpool's gay hotels: who opened the first one, when, and what life was like behind the front desk. If you ran a gay hotel, worked in one, or have old brochures, adverts or guest books, the town's heritage projects would love to hear from you. See our guide to heritage projects and archives.
Hotels change hands, prices vary and policies differ, so check before you book.