Towering ambitions for Kate

Ask Kate Shane what she does for a living and she replies, “I get paid to make people smile”.

In truth, her current role as managing director of Blackpool Tourism Limited is so much more than that. She has been tasked with leading the resort’s vitally important tourism industry into a new era.

It is a role she is exceptionally well qualified for. For almost 40 years Kate has built her career in Blackpool’s tourism industry – from her early days at First Leisure Corporation to heading up Merlin Entertainments’ cluster of attractions in the resort as regional director.

They included the iconic Tower with its circus, ballroom and The Dungeons, as well as Sea
Life Blackpool, Madame Tussauds and a number of other major visitor experiences on the Golden Mile, which together attract more than two million visitors annually.

The 56-year-old left that post last summer to become managing director of Blackpool Council’s leisure portfolio. And now she is back at the Tower after the council took over its management from Merlin in June this year.

As well as the Tower, Blackpool Tourism Limited now has a high-profile leisure portfolio that
includes Madame Tussauds, Sandcastle Waterpark and the town’s Showtown Museum.

Heading the council’s arms-length company, Kate has also been tasked with delivering the ‘One Blackpool’ strategic vision for the resort, creating a collaborative culture across the tourism sector, bringing together public and private sector leaders.

She sees that vision as vitally important to the future wellbeing of the resort and believes the barriers are now down when it comes to leisure businesses that may have
been fierce rivals in the past.

Sitting in her office, a quiet refuge from the hustle and bustle of the Tower on a summer
afternoon, Kate says: “We are all in this together, it is about Blackpool doing well and if
Blackpool does well, we all do well.

“There is a real sense of purpose. Your competitor used to be next door or further down
the Prom. Now it is other destinations, other countries, other tourist resorts.

“Our job across the sector is to work together to make Blackpool the destination of choice.

To deliver the best experience, the best service and the best value for money, so people will
make great memories and want to come back.

“It is about bringing people together around the table to have a focus and a strategy.”

Kate was born in another North West tourism town, Southport. However, she has great memories of holidays in Blackpool as a child, including standing on her dad’s shoes as he
danced with her in the Tower Ballroom.

It is those indelible memories that she believes makes Blackpool so special and what drives
her on is a determination to make sure other families can make their own.

Kate started her career in finance before moving to the operational side of the industry and her CV includes five years as the Tower’s general manager.

She describes it as “probably the best job in the world.”

She adds: “You get to work with a brilliant team and you are responsible for one of the most iconic, instantly recognised and important historic buildings in the country. It’s a magical place.

“When I first became general manager, I became a little bit obsessed with its social history and one of the advertising slogans for the ballroom really stuck with me.

“It said, ‘Blackpool Tower Ballroom, where a factory worker can be a duchess for a day’.
How wonderful is that?”

Kate joined Merlin in 2011 and during her time there explored ways to increase its footprint in the resort, creating more opportunities for local people.

She is proud of her work spearheading the delivery of Merlin’s £2.3m The Gruffalo and Friends Clubhouse Attraction on the Prom, which was a world first when it opened to
families in 2023.

Today her focus is on looking forward and making sure the resort has the offering it needs
to attract more visitors. To that end, this year’s Illuminations switch-on took on a new form.

Olly Murs performed an hour-long set before flicking the switch to trigger six miles of lights.

Kate says 160,000 people applied to the ballot for 24,000 places. A big screen further down the prom was installed for those who didn’t make the cut.

She adds: “The plan is to build on this every year.  I’d love it become a weekend-long ‘Switch-Festival’.

“We have the staging and the infrastructure, so why not? Doing something for families would give more reasons for people to come and stay.”

Becoming an all-year round destination is another important part of the vision. The lights
season has been extended into early January, along with the resort’s ‘Christmas by the
Sea’ attraction.

Heritage tourism is another area where she believes there is room for growth, pointing out
Blackpool’s fantastic portfolio of buildings, from the Tower and Grand Theatre to its Winter
Gardens and Grundy Art Gallery.

And she agrees that Eden Project Morecambe could act as a catalyst for a North West visitor
experience taking in the new attraction, Blackpool and the Lake District – an attractive
proposition for international travellers.

Central to this vision is creating employment.

She says: “I was at a meeting this morning at Blackpool and The Fylde College with business leaders across tourism. We were talking about how we invest in young and older people, in the skills to get them into the workplace.

“Blackpool exports talent because people don’t believe there is opportunity here, we have to change that. We need to make sure this is a place where people can build a career.

“We need to be creating our own. When I retire, I want my replacement to be from the Fylde coast.

“Look at the wide range of roles in the industry, from marketing to tech, HR and legal. If you want to be an engineer, what greater place to work than the Pleasure Beach, working on roller coasters?

“We have massive public events, there’s the Winter Gardens, Strictly Come Dancing
comes here.

“The experience you can get working in this industry in this town is fantastic. We need to show tourism as a career and encourage young people to choose it and we also need to
create those opportunities for all-year round employment.

“There is so much talent in the town and lots of energy, with everyone working together we can achieve that.”

Kate is a woman with many hats. She chairs the Blackpool Tourism BID (Business Improvement District) and sits on the Lancashire Combined Authority Business Board and the Blackpool Pride of Place Board.

As part of her community engagement work, she set up the Blackpool Tower Food Hub, a food donation point, during the Covid pandemic, with donations distributed across the town via Blackpool Food Bank.

Kate was also a driving force behind Merlin’s social value initiative with the Purpose Coalition, focusing on social impact delivered by place-based tourism organisations.

And in June this year she was awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours list for services to tourism and the local community.

Describing herself as “eternally optimistic” she says: “There is something about Blackpool hospitality, we care about people having a good time.

“People come here and it is our job to give them an amazing experience. We should be
grateful for every single pound somebody spends in the town."