British holiday company Butlins is moving ever further from its old 1950s Hi-de-Hi image by investing £16 million (€20.5 million) in new “mum-friendly” chalets.

Butlins has consulted popular website Mumsnet on the design of the chalets, which are being installed at the company’s Minehead holiday centre in Somerset.

There will be 117 chalets, which are due to open next April.

The expenditure is Butlins’s biggest in 2015 and follows a £2 million upgrade this year at Minehead and its holiday centres at Bognor Regis in West Sussex and Skegness in Lincolnshire.

The 2015 investment was announced earlier this week in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana during the annual convention of UK travel association Abta.

Plan follows £2 million upgrade at Minehead, Bognor Regis and Skegness

It was also announced that two years into a three-year project to grow local tourism, VisitEngland has generated a total of £517.9 million additional spending by UK residents on trips in their own country.

Speaking in Ljubljana, VisitEngland strategy and development director Louise Stewart said: “It is rewarding and encouraging to see the campaign succeed in boosting the visitor economy, creating jobs and inspiring people to take a holiday in England.”

She and other UK tour operators said domestic tourism was hit by the winter storms earlier this year but had recovered.

York-based short-break specialist holiday company SuperBreak said tourism in Yorkshire had been boosted by the staging of the Tour de France Grand Depart in the county.