Sea travel at half the level of five years ago

The quarterly tourism statistics for the period up to September show that a total of 45,000 visitors travelled by sea in the third quarter of this year, compared to 90,800 during the same period in 2011.

It is also down on the 2015 figure, which saw 54,250 visitors travelling by sea.

Mr Luxon said any decline in the number of passengers travelling by sea to and from the island was obviously disappointing and work was continuing to restore confidence, as well as continue improvements with punctuality and reliability.

'Whilst the first quarter of this year was undoubtedly affected by some poor weather, one of the main contributors to the fall in quarter three is the effect of the withdrawal of the double round trips Condor Liberation had operated in 2015,' he said.

'We were not able to migrate all of these passengers to other sailings, which impacted on inbound visitor numbers.

'Total route carryings are made up of both visitors and residents and the difficulties we experienced in 2015 clearly discouraged some islanders from travelling this year.'

Mr Luxon said that as a company they were all focused on continuing to work hard to restore confidence in the service.