Hotel need: Where is the evidence?

The independent economic impact evaluation on the De La Warr Pavilion sets out in 64 pages to show that the product of the building's 9m refurbishment is to generate 16m a year for the region.

But the Creative Impact study also says, in effect, that the rest of Bexhill has not kept pace.

Going over long-familiar ground, it says wages locally are 20% lower than the rest of the country, that Bexhill as a shopping centre lacks the multiple stores a town of its size would normally be expected to have, offers few opportunities for young people to start their working lives and lacks a single pub, restaurant or hotel listed in any recognised quality guide.

It also highlights the poor public transport links.

So has every survey and study on the town in the past three decades or more...

And still nothing has changed - with the exception of the fact that in the meantime Bexhill's once-thriving hotel industry has now dwindled to 180 hotel rooms.

Creative Impact concludes: "Bexhill is lacking in all visitor accommodation sectors and not at this stage able to exploit economically from much of the new tourism trade that the De La Warr Pavilion is generating..."

Time-honoured supply-and-demand laws apply here.

If the re-vamped Pavilion was generating that much demand for more bed space in the town surely the big hotel operators would have bitten SeaSpace's fingers off when the regeneration agency put forward its Metropole site scheme.

They would have been clamouring for the Grand Hotel site and badgering to put a hotel or hotels on the key Sackville Road / Marina sites.

The reality is that pavilion refurbishment has come too late to save the town hotel industry in the seaside week's stay tradition.

Hopefully, it could lead to some new development based on overnight stays.

The study's breakdown of pavilion income is also revealing - 12% from retail and hirings, 13% from programme, three per cent from restaurant and bars and 72% from grants, patronage and sponsorship.

The study is timely.

It is food for thought for the Rother working party looking at future council grant aid, food for thought for the pavilion Trust - and food for thought if there really are entrepreneurs seeking start-up sites for hotels, restaurants and stores locally.