SWIMMING HOTELS
The flow of visitors to Søndervig increased, and the lifeguard farms could no longer keep up with the demand. In 1884, 42 craftsmen in Ringkøbing decided to build a bathing hotel in Søndervig. Each craftsman put DKK 1.500 into the project (a total of DKK 63.000). A very large sum of money at the time, and Søndervig Badehotel saw its beginnings.
Later came the villa "Hvilen", which was actually a larger villa intended for year-round living. The demand at Søndervig Badehotel had become so great that the hotel was usually fully booked, and therefore "Hvilen" was used as an annex. Later it was renamed Pension Hvilen and later called Hotel Hvilen. Today we know the place as Hotel Strandkroen.
Information
The local population in the area did come to the sea once in a while, but it was with packed lunches under their arms, no niceties here! However, that changed when it was discovered that you could get coffee with home-baked bread for 50 øre at the beach hotel. So many let the coin slip, and Mutter is free from the hassle of the lunch package.
During the 1960s, Søndervig Badehotel changed its name to Vesterhavsbadet. In the 1970s, the old hotel was demolished and a new apartment complex was built on the site. It then became Denmark.
In 1920, the increasing number of tourists in Søndervig made carpenter Sofus Nielsen from Kloster decide to build a hotel. The hotel came to be called Hotel Klitten and was given a majestic location on Søndervig's highest dune.
The hotel was large and white with two towers that could be seen from a long distance. There were 13 rooms on the first floor and nine on the second floor. On the ground floor was the restaurant and outside it, there was a terrace with garden furniture, where hotel guests could enjoy the magnificent view of the sea and fjord. Hotel Klitten got an extension around 1970, which resulted in 12 extra rooms and a swimming pool in the basement. After being used for several more or less profitable purposes, the hotel ended up in the latter half of the 80s as Red Cross refugee accommodation.
The shopkeeper's wife in Søndervig, Kirsten Hansen, remembers she was on a walk by the sea, on a bitterly cold winter's day, with her youngest son, barely two years old, and met a father and son from the refugee centre. She thought the son was wearing a pair of blue boots or socks, but discovered to her horror that the boy had bare feet. Resolutely, she went back to the home and went through her two boys' wardrobes, dropping off what they could do without at the temporary refugee center at Hotel Klitten.
In the 1990s, Hotel Klitten was in such bad shape that it was demolished. In the first half of 2002, Feriecenter Klitten was built on the site. A main building, faithful to the old architecture, two towers and 16 surrounding houses with four apartments in each.
Advertisement is from Ringkøbing Amts Dagblad 24 April 1957
Source: Local history archive, Kloster
