Seaside fans camp out overnight to book £3,500 Dorset beach huts
The coveted beach huts sell out in minutes each January
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Your support makes all the difference.People queued for hours on Monday morning to be in with a chance of booking one of the coveted beach huts along a Dorset beach, with some even camping out overnight.
Avon Beach’s cabins, some of which are equipped with fridges and gas hobs, come up for rental each year in early January.
They cost £3,570 for the year, must be booked in person and often sell out in minutes, meaning seaside lovers keen to bag one for the summer must get in early.
There are 130 huts in total trimming the golden sandy bay, but only 40 had availability for 2021 rental, with just 12 available to rent for the entire summer period or whole year.
Rental bookings opened at 8am on Monday 3 January, but staff arriving at 7.30am found that dozens of would-be renters had already assembled, some with camping chairs and blankets.
Some told reporters they’d camped out overnight to increase their chances of bagging a hut.
Margaret Davis and her daughter Nicola told the Daily Mail they’d arrived at 4am and eventually been able to secure a hut.
Local Ken Ryder told journalists that he and his wife had taken turns to sit out by the cabins for more than 24 hours.
“My wife came down from 8am until 10 yesterday morning so I could go and get breakfast, then she came back from 12 until 2pm and I stayed overnight,” said Mr Ryder.
“The reason we retired here was to be close to the beach and having a hut is just the icing on the cake.”
The 2021 rise in UK-based “staycations”, prompted by Covid-related travel restrictions, is expected to continue into 2022.
Analysis by Simply Business last summer showed that the number of searches for “staycation” increased by 83 per cent between June 2020 and June 2021, while the number of searches for “staycation UK” increased by 173 per cent during the same period.
Research by Hoseasons and Opinion Matters, released in September, also showed that 83 per cent of those who took a staycation in 2021 hoped to do so again in 2022, with 24 per cent already planning their next trip at the time the poll was taken.
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