Skegness was, for hundreds of years, a small coastal fishing village on the east coast of the country, in the county of Lincolnshire, an area where the local gentry occasionally "took in the sea air". The local working class made their living from either the sea or the land as these were the only two main industries. Lord Scarborough, who owned all of the area, after leasing the “Skegness” land, sold it to the District Council for development. This was for the council to plan and build an infrastructure that would complete the town, build a proper sea front , build schools and housing, shops, etc. for the benefit of the local people, this meant more employment and housing, and of course to attract more holiday visitors.

This was very much the way things continued for years, however, with the middle and working class industrial revolution having spread to most industries, this meant increased wages and leisure time, and this started to bring more visitors to the east coast including Skegness, they came mainly from the Midlands and the North on day trips to paddle in the sea, sit on and picnic on the beach and visit the few side show that were there.

The completion of the rail link to Skegness in the late 1880 was the real beginning of the "tourist industry" to the area. People from the Midlands and Yorkshire now had a reasonably quick way to get to the seaside and they started to arrive in greater numbers on days out.

The local people had not been ideal or slow to realize that these visitors to the town needed lodging, refreshments and entertainment and there was money to be made. By the 1900 a large number of small businesses had started, these were the lodging houses, the tea shops, the travellers funfairs and side shows, trips out to sea on fishing boats, the beach donkeys, fish & chips and the beach games. As the years went on more permanent forms of entertainment were built and the funfair attractions were extended such as the Skegness Pier, Bottons Funfair and the Embassy Theatre.

Skegness continued to grow and flourish, more people were arriving for either a day at “Skeggy” or a weeks holiday, staying mainly in lodging houses but hotels as well.

One of the early entrepreneurs was a man who had seen the growing interest in the "holiday" market, he was already the owner of a large number of funfair sites around the country, one of these was the Bottons Funfair on Skegness sea front. Mr. Billy Butlin, who was then living in Skegness, saw and leased a small area of farm land, half way between the town of Skegness and the small village of Ingoldmells, and started to build his dream holiday camp. This was the start of things to come and turned Skegness into a holiday resort.

Sir Billy Butlin, as he later became, escalated in the 1930`s, what was the popular, middle class, holiday retreat of Skegness, established in the mid 1800`s, into the east coast mecca for working class family’s, he did this by opening his Butlins Holiday Camp to the masses. He offered them a chance that they had never been able to afford, for one affordable price the family got good accommodation, three square meals a day, entertainment and family games, not forgetting the clean and healthy air of the seaside coast. At the start there were places for 500 families, very quickly this proved not to be enough and eventually they were catering for 1500 families per week.

After the war period this explosion of holiday makers continued to grow and kept expanding throughout the years and with it the beginning of the static holiday caravan market, this was at the demise of the old style lodging houses, where come rain or shine families were not allowed in these boarding houses during the day . People were still flooding to the area, hotels and lodgings were still busy but the caravan manufactures started in the 1950`s to build larger but less mobile holiday caravans, aiming at the surge in family holidays, camping and touring caravan holidays, these new larger caravans were luxurious compared to the smaller touring vans or the lodging houses, and were left on “sites” where you paid a small ground rent for the use of the plot, and you could come and go as much as you liked.

Over the years the number of Caravan Parks has increased well into the hundreds locally, many older one's changing from mainly touring caravan sites to static sites and, in the majority of cases, any new development is now designed purely for static holiday caravans, which means a continual growth to add to the many thousands of holiday homes already in the area.

There are still many "hotels and holiday rooms" that are available to today's visitor, coupled with the holiday caravan market in and around Skegness, and along the coast line through to Mablethorpe, it is the most heavily populated caravan and recreational area of the UK.

Skegness as seen today has grown in to a thriving coastal town that has a large tourist industry that it relies on, as it is worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the local economy each year.