Jayne Dowle: Tide is turning at last at the seaside as resorts discover a sunnier attitude

Don’t worry, I’m not succumbing to the hype about “staycations”. I know that at least half of us are considering staying at home for our holidays this year to save money, according to research by the travel industry.

But I’ve been visiting the British seaside since I was in my pram, so I’m not suddenly going to become all evangelical about it. I love the seaside, with all its faults, but for too long it has let me down.

So what’s changed? In a word, well two words, it’s called positive attitude. Even the donkeys on the beach seemed to have it, and it only cost £2 a ride, cheaper than Whitby last year. But for this, the prize has to go to the young woman on the front desk at the Travelodge in Scarborough, who appeared to deal with stream after stream of demanding (and yes, sometimes rude) customers with a permanent and genuine smile.

When a 10-minute queue formed for breakfast at 9am on Saturday morning, she came over and offered to refund our money. Yes, offered. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. I’ve never stayed in any kind of hotel where I’ve been offered money back for anything.

I couldn’t help but compare it to the Spanish resort where we spent a four-figure sum last year. You had to book your time-slot for breakfast at the start of the week, and if you missed it, you were made to wait at the back of the queue. Of course, in Scarborough, some people still tutted and complained, but it was the way that she anticipated trouble that impressed me.

The power of Trip Advisor, the website which allows travellers to post their own unbiased reviews of hotels online, is indeed great. I was going to ask her whether she was so nice because she didn’t want the hotel to be slated, but she was so busy running around after everyone, I didn’t get chance.

Our party comprised four mums and six children aged from two to eight, so if anybody was going to test the market, it was us. We had planned ahead for Friday evening and booked a table in a certain well-known pizza chain.

I don’t know whether it was because we ended up with a patient mother-of-four for our waitress, but the service was cheerful and the bill, taking advantage of a “kids-eat-free” deal, remarkably reasonable.

For lunch the next day, we found a café, following my grandma’s tried and tested rules: is it clean? Is there anybody else in? Can you see the size of the portions on their plates? There were plenty of contenders, and again, despite the polite demands – glasses of tap water, provenance of steak pie, extra gravy – the waitress never rolled her eyes at us once.

It must be said, over the weekend, we did ask more questions than you can imagine possible. The poor bus inspector on the round-the-bays open-top bus was grilled on exactly how much it would cost, where the bus stopped and could we get on and off again. He did look a bit testy when I asked him the same questions two days running, but after being abandoned at our hotel by the shuttle bus last year and left to find our own way to Barcelona airport by taxi (cost, 120 euros), experience has taught me never to trust official transport information, especially when you have small children in tow. But I was heartened by the fact that he was actually there, checking that the drivers were on time and smiling at the passengers.

It was the same “let-me-help-you” attitude at the council-owned campsite in Filey. We were only there for the day, visiting friends, and the man in charge seemed delighted to inform me that it would only cost £2 to park next to their motorhome. Information about cheap parking? Actually volunteered? At the seaside? I was beginning to think that we had somehow landed in a parallel universe.

And then it struck me. We were still in Yorkshire, we were just “all in this together”. It’s what David Cameron goes on about. Only this was genuine, not some manufactured political spiel, just the recognition that we were all families trying to do our best for our kids and give them a seaside treat, but in no position to be ripped off.

And of course, with the recognition that every pound is precious, hoteliers, shop-owners, café proprietors and all are recognising that good customer service is crucial.

There are plenty of boarded-up shops in any seaside town to stand testimony to businesses which didn’t survive the recession.

Of course, we might just have dropped lucky. The sun was (mostly) shining, and it is the start of the summer season, after all. But I’m travelling hopefully, and if this is what our seaside can offer, then this year, I might not be travelling much further than Scarborough.