A YORK guest house owner is seeking permission to turn the building into seven flats in the face of growing competition in the city from Airbnb and big new hotels.

But Elizabeth Jackson insists she won’t be closing down the Priory Guest House in Fulford Road any time soon.

She said competition was making business difficult for traditional guest houses like hers, but she wanted to keep the Priory open and merely wanted consent for the change of use as an insurance policy for the future, in case trade continued to worsen.

She said the business had been in the family since her grandmother Lily Jackson opened it in the 1930s, but it had been badly affected in recent times by both the growth of huge new chain hotels and Airbnb - the online service which some people use to advertise bed and breakfast accommodation in their homes.

“I enjoy running it but it is getting harder,” she said. “Airbnb is definitely making a difference.

“I am not closing the hotel but I want the permission in place in case it becomes too difficult to carry on at some time in the future.”

She said the property was built in the 19th century as a private residence but in the early 1930s, her grandmother, who was widowed, bought it to open it as a boarding house, specifically where officers from nearby Imphal Barracks could stay, using it as an officers’ mess.

Her parents Barbara and George bought it in 1955, and decided to run it as a guest house for visitors to York.

“At that time, it was the only one between York and Selby,” she said.

“My father died in 1993 and my mother died in 2002, since when I have run it.”

She said the hotel was well known to guests for twin gothic arches in the gardens, which are a folly installed in Victorian times and are overlooked by an orangery and terrace which opened in 2016.

Fishergate Green councillor Dave Taylor raised concerns about the problems facing such guest houses, saying that while there were some times when York’s hotels were close to capacity, he knew that smaller, family-run guest houses had found it tougher in recent years.

“A few proprietors have said this to me and I’ve noticed a few conversions, often to student housing as that market does not yet quite appear to be saturated,” he said.

Fellow councillor Andy D’Agorne said he wondered if the number of new hotels in York had reached saturation point and asked what this would mean for the city’s dozens of traditional guest houses, such as those along Fulford Road.