‘We need to act differently to halt the decline in tourism’
Funding, qualified leadership and political will are all needed if Guernsey’s tourism figures are to return to the levels of 2019, the president of the Guernsey Hospitality Association has said.
Alan Sillett was responding to the publication of the first Travel and Visitor Annual Report, which he said showed that the island had a tourism ‘problem’ and needed to recognise this fact before coming up with improvements to the visitor economy.
There were several concerning statistics in the report, compared to the figures pre-Covid, he said.
These included the total number of staying visitors falling by 23%, with the number staying in hotels down by 24%, while those using campsites, guest houses and other paid accommodation had dropped by 29%.
And the total number of leisure visitors had fallen by more than one third, 56,000, while there was a 14,000 reduction, almost a third, in the number of business visitors.
But once people were in the island, the figures indicated that people had a good time. 87% said that the service level at their accommodation was high or very high, 84% said that island knowledge and the overall standard of accommodation was high or very high, and eight out of 10 giving a similar rating for the quality of food.
Eating and/or drinking out was the most popular activity reported by 85% of visitors as they left the island last year.
‘The natural scenery, heritage, quality of accommodation, and the dining out options available all make us a special place to visit,’ said Mr Sillett.
‘But we need to find ways to tempt potential visitors to book a flight or a ferry to come here in the first place, and that is a challenge.’
He called the level of current oversight of the visitor and hospitality industry ‘messy’, with three groups having different levels of input.
‘We have the Committee for Economic Development, Visit Guernsey, and the Tourism Management Board. But do we really have joined-up thinking for the whole industry?’
The island had suffered a significant decline in the number of visitors from Jersey in the last few years, he added, and with no charter flights from Germany this year, there were likely to be huge losses there, too.
‘We have to ask, is there the political will needed to get us out of this situation? Is the right level of funding in place? Where is the qualified leadership to push forwards to achieve a return to 2019 visitor numbers?’
Mr Sillett wondered if a new, long-awaited tourism strategy, due to be published by the TMB next month, would show a clear pathway to future growth.
‘Because if we carry on as we are, hoping for some incremental annual growth, we won’t be successful. We need to act differently to achieve different results.’
