Hilton closes its Blackpool hotel after 19 years - with no news on the new occupier

Signage has been taken down at the hotel

All signage marking the hotel out as a Hilton were removed from the building ahead of it ceasing at midnight. With the Hilton branding being taken down, the hotel's old name, The Pembroke Hotel, can now be seen for the first time in nearly two decades.

After Hilton cease operations at the site the hotel will still remain open, however there is still no word on who the new occupier of the building will be. Starwood Capital Group, a global private investment firm, own the building after purchasing it in March as part of a group deal worth Â£135m.

Starwood Capital Group has previously worked with the hotel chain Kew Green, opening at the former Holiday Inn in Manchester.

The Hilton sign can still be seen in dirt on the side of the hotel.

Blackpool's Hilton opened in 1982 as The Pembroke alongside the Derby Baths, which were later bulldozed. At that time it was owned by the Birmingham-based Metropole Group a subsidiary of Tiny Rowland’s Lonrho empire.

The hotel became the Stakis Blackpool in 1996 following the Â£327m takeover of the Metropole Group, before becoming part of the Hilton group in 1999. They put it up for sale in July 2013 but no buyer was found and it was taken off the market three months later. Park Hotels and Resorts was formed in January 2017 as a spin-off company of Hilton.

The Hampton by Hilton hotel in South Shore remains open and is unaffected by this closure.

The hotel has held the Labour Party's North West regional conference for a number of years. In 2002, Ken Livingstone famously got a taxi from the hotel to London after that year's conference. The Â£260 fare was with Blackpool taxi company, Premier Cabs.