Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin MBE (29 September 1899 – 12 June 1980) was a South African-born British entrepreneur whose name is synonymous with the British holiday camp. Although holiday camps such as Warner's existed in one form or another before Butlin opened his first in 1936, it was Butlin who turned holiday camps into a multimillion-pound industry and an important aspect of British culture.