Veteran tourist attraction owner pleads for support
A LEADING attraction owner has called for Visit Guernsey to be saved and better funded, in order to end the ‘neglect’ shown to the tourism sector.
Occupation Museum owner Richard Heaume said marketing the island should not be delegated to people working in the industry.
‘I am very upset. Guernsey has had a tourist economy since the turn of the last century and the States has always supported it with a tourist authority or a tourist board, and more recently with Visit Guernsey.
‘And it supported the economy, it’s publicised and promoted Guernsey for tourism, and now they’re talking of scrapping it.
‘The thing is, Jersey is not thinking of scrapping their Visit Jersey, they are going ahead and they are going way ahead of us in advertising and promoting their island by the States funding it.
‘The States must fund tourism and they must keep Visit Guernsey for the future.
‘I am desperate that there is more support for tourism, and Visit Guernsey keeps going, if we lose it there is nothing to replace it.
Economic Development is considering getting rid of Visit Guernsey and replacing it with a body called a ‘destination marketing organisation’, which would be similar to a public-private partnership.
A report is being carried out to look at whether the island has the expertise to do this successfully.
That report should be completed within the next 12 weeks.
Before the pandemic it was estimated that some 5,000 people were employed in tourism.
However, Mr Heaume thinks that tourism extends its importance even beyond that with a symbiotic relationship with other sectors.
He fears that losing Visit Guernsey would mean the island falling further behind on Jersey.
‘Tourism is made up of not just hotels and attractions, it’s made up of so many other little things as well, and there’s the question of inspections, grading.
‘There’s so many other things which go with tourism that you need an umbrella organisation to run them, so the States
should take the responsibility for running tourism.
‘They should not neglect tourism by throwing it back at the tourist operators, the operators have not got the money and it’s for the States to run it and for the States to pay for it.
‘They should be promoting Guernsey now, they should be advertising to get visitors.
‘We should have been advertising last year in the lockdown to get visitors and we haven’t. Jersey’s doing it all the time, we’ve completely closed the door on tourism.’
