Visitors used to love living ‘local’
IN DAYS GONE BY, not so long ago, Guernsey had healthy tourism, all tourists were known locally as ‘visitors’.
Many visitors returned year after year and some actually lived with their hosts, eating the same meals and usually sharing the same table as their hosts; that was the norm then.
Things were going well; on returning home our visitors, when asked where they had been on holiday, would tell their friends and relatives, ‘We have been to Guernsey visiting our friends’.
The fact that they had been paying guests often wasn’t mentioned.
Many of the men with guest houses either had a boat or knew a friend or relative who had one. The male visitors might be asked if they would like to go out in the boat – in those days the women would probably have gone to Town.
Too soon new regulations came into force, so these tiny enterprises ended. The visitors had to have their own cooking and dining area. To comply with the new rules houses would have to be extended, extra rooms would have to be built. The cry from the authorities was, ‘We have to keep up with other countries’.
Nobody wanted these changes, least of all the visitors themselves. It is still possible in some parts of France to live with the family, eat with and when they do. That in a country where everything is regulated.
B. J. DUQUEMIN
ADDRESS WITHHELD.
