‘States should forget about extending island’s runway’

La Grande Mare Hotel owner and redeveloper Stephen Lansdown said that continuing to look into an extension was a waste of time and money.

‘I’m not worried about the planes that come in,’ he said.

‘We don’t need big jets. We’re not an Easyjet destination. We should stick with what we’ve got. I would say stop talking about the airport runway. Forget about it. We can increase numbers at the airport without extending the runway.’

The States voted only last month to continue investigating whether to extend the runway. Economic Development said it would present recommendations to the Assembly by May.

Mr Lansdown, who is leading the multimillion pound redevelopment to turn La Grande Mare Hotel into an international golf and events centre, told a Chamber of Commerce lunch yesterday that the States had already spent too long discussing the length of the runway when there should be higher priorities to encourage tourism. In a wide-ranging analysis of the industry, Mr Lansdown warned that Policy & Resource’s current proposal to introduce a 5% goods and services tax would harm the industry locally.

‘Be wary of GST,’ he said.

‘As soon as you put in GST, you lose an advantage for tourism. GST would increase our costs and increase our administrative burden. And I’m sure there are other ways of raising money.’

P&R has argued that GST would spread some of the tax burden to tourists, but Mr Lansdown rejected that as a good reason for the tax.

‘When people come to the island, they spend their money in local businesses. It is wrong to say they don’t contribute.’

He also urged reform of Visit Guernsey, through which the States promote the Bailiwick as a tourist destination.

‘I would describe what Visit Guernsey do as nice. It’s not good and it’s not bad,’ he said.

‘Visit Guernsey should be run by industry. The industry has a stake in it.’

Economic Development recently announced that it was creating a tourism management board to bring together the industry’s stakeholders and help develop a new tourism strategy.

Hannah Beacom, Island Coachways managing director, has been appointed as the board’s first chairwoman.

‘Visit Guernsey should be part of the tourism management board. Government should get out of the way,’ said Mr Lansdown.

‘Let’s make Visit Guernsey go from nice to great.’

He was optimistic about the future of tourism if government supported the industry to flourish.

‘Let’s go from 2% [of the island’s economy] to 4% and then 6% and then 8%. Then we start to be significant and we start to get politicians to take notice.’

But he was critical of the Economic Development committee’s decision to cut the Visit Guernsey budget ahead of the creation of the tourism management board, saying the move ‘doesn’t encourage’ him.