Cruises go, but hopes for tourism remain

That same thought process has now been applied to the cruise season, with Guernsey shutting up shop to these visitors until 2022.

It will come as a big blow to those tourist-focused businesses that lost out last year and would have hoped to have benefited from a boost towards the back end of the summer and autumn.

Progress in the vaccination programme, testing requirements and other safety measures could easily see a British Isles cruise season take shape at the very least and others will look to capitalise on that. Other British ports have already begun making welcoming noises on the back of the decision here.

Tourist businesses cannot be sustained on local custom alone for much longer and the move has snuffed out any hope that there will be a share of the annual £4m. economic contribution the cruise sector usually brings in.

Those who favour an extremely cautious approach will wholeheartedly back Economic Development, but others will lament the signal that it sends out and that it has come so soon.

But there is some hope for the tourism sector.

Yesterday Civil Contingencies Authority chairman Peter Ferbrache signalled that tourists would return at some point this summer.

The other side of the coin is that islanders can also hope to see their friends and family – the strain of such a long period of border controls and quarantine, mostly understandable as they have been, has started to show strongly.

Covid-19 case numbers have fallen back to six and amid all the extensive testing no new cases have been identified for days. The vaccination programme here has continued to offer protection to the most vulnerable from serious illness.

Guernsey can look to the progress being made in Jersey and the UK and begin to believe that there is a route to opening up borders as the summer progresses.

Nothing is certain, everyone realises that, but all the signs are increasingly encouraging.