We show a lack of confidence
WRITE about cruise liners and immediately some are casting doubt about the sustainability of the industry and/or whether Guernsey gets a big enough piece of it.
This newspaper spoke to people running a variety of businesses, all of whom believed that cruise passengers were helping to boost their profits.
Not everyone would say this. From ‘they don’t even get off the boat’ to ‘they don’t even buy a cup of coffee’, many people seem to have reasons to doubt that cruise liner passengers do anything for the island.
But it’s a fair bet that Jersey would be very happy to get a slice of this market.
It would be nice to be able to confidently state that today the island would be far less casual about throwing away the foothold we had in the international powerboats than we were in helping to usher it away from our shores in the mid-1990s.
We’d like to think so, but the sad reality is that surely we would find a reason not to financially support such a venture, or we’d again be unhappy about the loss of car parking.
When it comes to tourism, it feels like we never learn. Everybody’s got a view on the industry, but few seem to show any belief, as the Economic Development Committee president said.
‘Why haven’t we got confidence?’ Deputy Neil Inder asked. For some reason, selling ourselves always seems to be really difficult.