August 3, 2008

EUROPE | ENGLAND | EASTBOURNE

Life is Grand

By Mark Jolly

The resurgence of England’s quintessential seaside resort.

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The seaside resort of Eastbourne has weathered plenty of storms through the years. During World War II it was the most heavily bombed town in southeast England, while in recent times its fortunes faded — along with many of the country’s coastal resorts — as British travelers favored vacations abroad. But now the resort is back on the map: With fuel costs rising and recession fears rumbling, more than half of Britons are choosing to holiday at home this summer, and in Eastbourne hotel bookings are up 66 percent.

Seventy-three miles south of London, the self-proclaimed “sunniest place in Britain” is basking in the spotlight again. Its current hotel boom includes the city’s first art hotel (the da Vinci) and a new “designer budget hotel,” (the Big Sleep), while a brand new cutting-edge cultural center is slated to open this fall. Plus, August 14-17 sees the return of Airbourne, the world’s biggest seafront air show, with Bandstand (unrestricted view) tickets now on sale.

Alternatively, you could just watch the entire spectacle from your private seafront balcony at the Grand Hotel. If Eastbourne is the most English of English resorts, the Grand is the imperious emblem of its Victorian heritage. Built in 1875 and known as “The White Palace,” the seafront hotel’s guestbook reads like a Who’s Who of English luminaries: Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edward Elgar, Alec Guinness… These days, you’ll still find top-hatted liveried doorman to greet you at the entrance, and two formal dining rooms (the Mirabelle and the Garden), where your meal is revealed under a gleaming silver cloche. But like Eastbourne itself, the Grand is in the midst of an identity makeover.

Having just begun a head-to-toe refurb, the 152-room hotel now positions itself as a destination for the upscale family experience — rather than a starched relic of five-star elegance. When globorati recently dispatched our “family-of-four” reporters, the two children were promptly armed with a “junior crew” goody bag containing camera, sun hat and sunglasses, while a dedicated high tea for kids included home-cooked shepherds pie and plaice goujons.

A complimentary daycare service for three-to-eight-year-olds was flexible enough to welcome a 10-year-old, and, in addition to an evening babysitting service, the Grand also offers its own listen-in monitoring system, whereby staff operators check on children (by uninterrupted speakerphone connection) every three-to-five minutes. (The service has gained such a dependable reputation that most repeat guests don’t even bother with babysitters anymore.)

Best of all — and this is always the key test for any family-focused hotel — the Grand manages not to alienate non-family guests. During globorati’s stay, we were told there were 31 children checked in, but you would have been hard-pressed to have even noticed them: between lounging by the outdoor pool, the indoor pool, the spa and the terraced bar, the Grand felt more like a classic private members club than a bucket-and-spade kiddies club. Claude Debussy must have felt the same way — the composer completed his symphony La Mer here in 1905.