Ever since Harpers & Queen dubbed it "the coolest city on the planet", Bournemouth has been in no doubt that it is the most glamorous of English seaside resorts

Not for Bournemouth the tawdry candy floss and knotted hanky image of Blackpool or Brighton. Instead, it has reinvented itself as a mecca for more sophisticated hedonists.

True, the city has been a playground for most of its history. Once a fishing village synonymous with smuggling brandy, silk, and gin, it later became a Victorian health spa. In the first years of the 20th century, Bournemouth was as wealthy as New York, or at least, that's what the cab drivers will tell you.

But after having its soul knocked out in the second world war, Bournemouth - though still wealthy - became popular only with grey-haired retirees and attendees of Conservative party conferences.

The question is how has Bournemouth managed to move from greying to grooving and escape the demise faced by so many other seaside resorts?

In a report on the state of British seaside towns, the English Tourism Council held Bournemouth up as a model for regeneration.

The report, entitled Sea Changes, said that while seaside resorts still generate £4.5bn of spending a year, they are fighting a losing battle to attract visitors after the number of Britons holidaying abroad has grown 108 per cent in the last 10 years.

"Some resorts will have to look at themselves and come to the conclusion that there is no future for them as tourist destinations," said Mary Lynch, the ETC's chief executive, when she released the report earlier this year.

"Some have reached the stage where that will not be a great step. The seaside has a future but it isn't in nostalgia - ice-creams and amusement arcades will not satisfy another generation."

The report cited Bournemouth's year-round trade based on the leisure and conference circuit as a blueprint for other sagging coastal towns to follow. If proof were needed of its success as a conference destination, New Labour held its annual national meeting there last year.

But Bournemouth's success has been as carefully designed as the impressively zoned beaches - the children's zones, no-smoking zones and cans-only zones that now mark out the seven-mile stretch of sandy beach.

Almost 20 years ago the council built the Bournemouth International Conference Centre, aimed at putting the city firmly on the conference map as a rival to Harrogate and Birmingham.

"Once it had built the all-purpose, all-singing, all-dancing conference centre, it went from there," says Mark Haslingden, vice-president of the Bournemouth Hotel & Restaurants Association.

"We couldn't survive on the leisure side of the business but with the conference market we're busy right throughout the year.

"We get the Rotarians, the Masonic Lodges, the nurses, the environmental health officers and the police - you name it. As soon as we get rid of one lot, we get another."

The conference industry has spawned a rich market in training courses, a plethora of language schools and encouraged an increasing number of financial services employers to locate in the city, including Abbey Life, Chase Manhattan and the Portman Building Society. This has created a buoyant residential market that supplements the tourist industry and encourages investment.

The city now boasts more than 30 three-star hotels and a Marriott, a Hilton and a Carlton at the upper end of the market.

"It's the chicken and egg effect," says Ken Male, head of tourism for the region. "Owners are able to put more into businesses, because they know there's going to be customers 24-seven, 365 days a year."

Cafes, restaurants, theme bars and dance clubs have sprung up, helping to make the town a destination for all hip Europeans, and giving the city the nickname of party capital of the south. And while these visitors stay for shorter periods, they tend to spend more.

"We still get the bucket and spade holidaymakers - families who stay here for a week or so - but for the most part stay patterns are shorter, with people staying two or three nights," says Mr Male. "But the decline in bed nights is counteracted by the fact that short stayers are high spenders."

Despite the burgeoning nightclub scene, Mr Male is keen to stress that Bournemouth has no ambitions to compete with Ibiza. "We want you to have a good time, but we're going for quality, not the yob element," he says.