Fred Pontin was born in London’s East End in 1906. He began his working life as a messenger boy at the London Stock Exchange, where he quickly gained an understanding of how companies raised capital through share issues – and noticed that there was always a ready stream of investors eager to put their money to work.
During World War II, Pontin was unable to enlist due to a hearing issue, so the Ministry of Labour sent him to the Orkney Isles. There, he worked with a catering manager to supply affordable meals for thousands of workers building military defenses and airfields, helping to source food and find creative ways to keep costs down.
After the war, Pontin used this experience to start his own mass catering business and secured a contract in Bristol, where he provided meals for hundreds of construction workers rebuilding the city.
In 1946, Pontin discovered two holiday camps up for sale at Brean Sands and Osmington Bay. Both had opened in the 1930s under the ownership of George Harrison and Leslie Dean, trading as Chalet Camps Ltd. While Brean Sands was in need of significant repairs, Osmington Bay was in relatively good condition.
Pontin assembled a group of friends and investors to form a consortium, raising £72,600 to purchase the company and the two camps. Alexander Bernstein became the largest shareholder, holding an 18% stake, while Pontin himself took a 9% share, largely financed by a bank loan and the sale of his catering business. Leslie Dean retained a small stake.
Soon after, the company was publicly listed on the Bristol Stock Exchange in a complex transaction later described as “unprecedented and unlikely to succeed under today’s stricter regulations.” The flotation generated enough capital to allow the company to acquire four additional camps over the following two years.
The directors appointed Pontin as Managing Director with an initial salary of £1,000 per year, plus £200 in expenses, along with 5% of the net profits – a benefit that, by 1975, made him the highest-paid company boss in Britain. Although Pontin only ever held a small stake in the company, the directors gave him free reign to do mostly whatever he wanted, and he served as its public face. Some of the decision-making behind the scenes was handled by fellow director and business expert, Ann Miller. Pontin later acknowledged that he could never have achieved as much as he did without Miller’s insight and expertise.
The company went through a rough patch in the early-1950s but things improved towards the end of the decade and more camps were acquired. He’d sometimes buy a camp privately, run it for a year or two and then sell it to Pontins Ltd in return for company shares. This came to a halt after shareholders complained he was trading outside the company’s influence and profiting unfairly from the disposal.
In the early years, all holiday camps operated on a full-board basis, with all meals included. Chalets often consisted of little more than a bed, sink and wardrobe. Communal toilets and shower blocks were still commonplace. Over time, however, customers began to demand more space, greater comfort, and freedom from the rigid schedules of regimented meal times.
Recognising this demand, Pontin introduced self-catering accommodation. New, larger chalets were built, each featuring a kitchen, dining area, living space, and bathroom. Unlike full-board stays, which were charged per person, self-catering was priced per chalet. This often made it more economical for larger families – though guests were responsible for providing their own meals.
This was just one example of how Pontin pioneered many of the changes that shaped the holiday camp industry. He had a knack for spotting trends early, and while his ideas were sometimes dismissed by others in the business, most ultimately proved successful – and were later copied by the very people who had once doubted them.
In 1963, Pontin opened two of the country’s first all self-catering camps at Wick Ferry and Wall Park. Most camps built after this date followed the same model and became known as ‘Rent a Chalet’ sites. All featured coin-operated electricity meters and push-button timers in the showers – and even the early televisions required coins. One of the first customers at Wick Ferry famously complained that it cost “2 shillings for three hours of TV!”
Many of the older full-board camps remained unchanged, as retrofitting the chalets with kitchens and dining areas would have been impractical. Instead, Fred Pontin took a new approach to full-board dining by removing waitresses and fixed menus and introducing an all-you-can-eat buffet system. While other camp owners warned that it would be an expensive mistake, the opposite proved true: the new system actually reduced costs and soon became a model that other camps began to adopt.
In 1963 the original Brean Sands camp underwent a massive expansion to become the first of the Pontin self catering mega-camps. These huge sites could accommodate thousands of people in hundreds of flats. Over the next 10 years more such camps were built at Prestatyn, Camber Sands, Hemsby and Southport They lacked the charm and character of the smaller sites, and most ended up looking more like council estates, but for the time they were hugely popular.
Pontin was also one of the key pioneers of cheap foreign holidays through his Pontinental Holidays company. In 1963, he opened his first overseas hotel – the brand-new Pineta Beach resort in Sardinia. After some initial teething problems and several years of losses, the overseas division eventually went on to generate around 20% of the company’s annual profits.
During the 1960s, Pontin befriended a young builder named Trevor Hemmings, with some describing him as a protégé – or even a surrogate son. Hemmings had already established a large and successful construction business and was awarded the maintenance contract for all the Pontin camps. His company later won the contract to build the new camps at Southport and Prestatyn. In 1976, Hemmings sold his construction company to Pontins in exchange for 500,000 company shares, making him the second-largest shareholder.
By this time, Pontins was operating 22 camps across the UK, catering to around a million guests each year – roughly the same number as Butlins, which managed with just eight. While Butlins was aimed squarely at the working classes, Pontins positioned itself a notch higher. Despite generally being cheaper – thanks to having fewer large-scale facilities – Pontins appealed to the lower middle classes by focusing on smaller, more individual camps, along with better food and more comfortable accommodation.
In 1977, Pontins launched their Hobby & Leisure holidays, a program designed to attract guests during the off-peak season. These holidays quickly grew into one of the UK’s largest selections of specialist activity breaks, covering everything from ballroom dancing and sports to music lessons and dance festivals. At model-making events, it was not unusual to see the swimming pool filled with radio-controlled boats, or see steam trains chuffing along the pathways. By the 1980s, Pontins was offering over 40 unique events each year. Interest began to decline in the 1990s, and the program gradually faded away.
Pontin was widely respected for his charitable work and received numerous accolades, including the British Red Cross Badge of Honour. In 1968 he served as Chief Barker of the Variety Club of Great Britain, helping to raise £1 million, and went on to act as the club’s president for 16 years.
But he was certainly no saint. His abrasive management style – often marked by bullying and humiliation – would almost certainly not be tolerated today, and stories of his alleged womanising became the stuff of legend. Unlike Billy Butlin, who thrived on showmanship, Pontin was more reserved, rarely smiling, and far more the hard-nosed businessman.
Pontin once kicked out a one-legged customer for complaining about the lack of disabled facilities. A clause in the 1960s Pontins brochure stated “We regret that we are unable to accept bookings in respect of invalids, infirmed and disabled people”. After a woman complained to the media in 1969 the company apologised and said the clause was ‘clumsily worded’. Even as late as 1994 Pontins were saying that “some of our chalets are on the first floor and many of our locations are unsuitable if you are disabled or have difficulty getting around”.
But to the public, Pontin remained a popular figure, becoming a household name thanks to his regular TV adverts and his famous “book early” catchphrase. Always keen on publicity, he owned a number of racehorses, which he renamed after various aspects of his business—Go Pontin, Pontingo, Go Pontinental, and Cala Mesquida, the latter named after his Majorca holiday resort. The Jockey Club, however, disapproved of such blatant promotion and banned any further name changes.
The horses were kept at his Farringford Hotel on the Isle of Wight, where one in particular made history. A horse named Specify defied the odds to win the 1971 Grand National as a 28–1 outsider. After its racing career, Specify was laid to rest at Farringford, where a stone plaque still marks its grave today.
Fred Pontin was knighted in 1976, but just two years later the business was sold to Coral Leisure for £56 million. At 72, Pontin stepped down, later admitting that he regretted the sale – but as a minority shareholder, the decision had been largely out of his hands. He walked away with £1.7 million, plus a £200,000 golden handshake as compensation for loss of office. Trevor Hemmings took over as managing director.
To keep himself busy, Pontin acquired a handful of hotels and also bought the London Dungeon from its original owner.
In 1980 Coral Leisure, including Pontins, was sold to Bass Brewers. Trevor Hemmings continued to manage Pontins, adding a number of smaller camps and caravan parks to the portfolio. Although these sites appeared in the main Pontins brochure, they did not actually operate under the Pontins name.
In 1987 Hemmings orchestrated a management buyout, taking full control of the UK camps. From then on, the focus quickly shifted towards land redevelopment. The golden era of the holiday camp was long past, and by the late 1980s many of the sites were looking a bit rundown. At the same time, soaring property prices meant that the land beneath them was now often extremely valuable.
As a result, closures followed. Four camps were closed or sold during the 1980s, and a further dozen disappeared in the 1990s leaving just 8 camps remaining. In 1996 Pontins launched a four-year, £55 million refurbishment program. Spread across all eight camps, the funds were totally insufficient to overhaul everything, but they did address some of the issues.
Butlins were starting to shift more upmarket and were building new chalet blocks which attracted a premium price. Pontins went the other direction and began slashing their prices to keep the camps full.
Sir Fred Pontin died in 2000 at the age of 93.
In 2008 Pontins changed hands once again, this time sold for £46 million to Ocean Parcs, a consortium led by Graham Parr, a former Pontins executive and long-time protégé of Trevor Hemmings. At the time, the Pontins empire still consisted of eight camps, but the deal covered only five of them. The remaining three sites were retained by Hemmings and leased back to the new owners.
Ocean Parcs talked big, unveiling ambitious plans for sweeping changes and a £50 million refurbishment programme. In reality, little materialised. Standards continued to slip, investment failed to appear, and in 2011 the company collapsed into bankruptcy. By then Trevor Hemmings had already withdrawn his three camps for redevelopment, leaving just five in the chain. These were picked up by Britannia Hotels for £18.5 million. Britannia wasted no time in accusing the previous owners of “milking it for money” and displaying “tremendous arrogance.”
Britannia have since been blamed for everything that has gone wrong with Pontins, but the truth is more complicated. By the time they took over, the camps were already tired and run-down after years of neglect by successive owners who simply didn’t care. Bringing them back to their former glory would have required an outlay so vast it was never realistically on the cards.
To their credit, Britannia did spend several million pounds on improvements. Most of the chalets received new furniture, fresh coats of paint, updated windows and new flooring. Public areas were given attention too, with acres of new carpet laid, refurbished ballrooms, and a handful of new attractions added. Admittedly, much of this work was done on the cheap, and the phrase “lipstick on a pig” is hard to avoid – but even so, the camps under Britannia’s ownership looked better than they had in years.
In 2013, they were awarded the UK Customer Satisfaction Index award for being one of the most improved businesses in the UK. The following year, they even bought back an old holiday camp at Sand Bay, which Hemmings had sold 14 years earlier.
However, they largely continued the long-standing policy of pitching the camps at the budget end of the market, To put it in perspective, an apartment that cost £259 per week in August 1990 was priced at just £209 per week in August 2015. On top of this, a steady stream of offers and discounts meant that most guests ended up paying even less.
But it was a losing battle. The low prices left little margin for cleaning, maintenance, or future investment, and inevitably attracted a less desirable clientele. In truth, many people only returned because the camps were cheap, not because they offered a quality experience. Reviews were overwhelmingly negative, and the company faced a steady stream of bad press.
After a promising start, Britannia seemed to give up and admit defeat. At least they tried…
They eventually threw in the towel in 2023 by announcing the closures of the camps at Camber Sands, Southport and Prestatyn. Brean Sands also closed due to a 3 year contract to house workers for the nearby Hinckley C nuclear project. In 2025 it was announced that Pakefield would also be closing to accommodate construction workers – this time for the Sizewell C nuclear project.
Only one holiday camp remains open – Sand Bay – and it’s not even branded under the Pontins name anymore. At the time of writing, the future of the closed camps still remains uncertain. They’re all still owned by Britannia,, and they’ve all been mothballed and still protected by security. We’ll update this page as new information is released.
We’ve also covered the history of several individual Pontins camps which can be found in our A-Z blog index.
We’d love to hear your stories and memories of Pontins. Please feel free to leave a comment below.
