Problems with Travel Tracker keeping island visitors away

This is something other travellers to the island should know about. It is perhaps something keeping the hotels empty.

Here is their story (in three emails, without my intermediate responses):

‘[We] tried to fill in the forms on the Bailiwick website to enter [the island], but the site has several technical problems and does not proceed, e.g. one cannot enter the date for the expiration of the passport, yet without the date one cannot proceed. [We have] tried it for several days now.’

Two days later:

‘I am very sorry, but the Covid Travel Tracker form includes five different formulas to be filled in on the website to create a code at the end. Each of these formulas in itself does not work. We have spent quite some time with the moderators of the website, who admit that they have big problems at the moment. When we tried it for the seventh time we got further than before, but suddenly all data disappeared.’

Finally, another two days later:

‘I think there is nothing you or anyone can do other than to wait until they have been revised and restored the website. Thus we have to cancel the trip for now. We asked how other people get into Guernsey without the formulas and they say, if it does not work 48 hours before one lands, they will write and allow one to go anyway and settle all matters at the border. But this does not work for us, as when checking in at a German airport they expect one to have all papers ready for the destination country. We will keep an eye on the website and see whether they manage later in November or in December.’

I think this is awful for Guernsey as it will become known that people should keep well away from Guernsey.

Separately, but also on the same subject, on a recent weekend I was in London. On Monday and Tuesday I tried endlessly to fill in the tracker, without any success.

Eventually I had to go to the airport. I tried several more times on the train, with no success, so I just flew to Guernsey.

On arrival the staff could not work out the problem so it was referred upstream to a senior manager who had access to the main computer. His report came back 20 minutes later that the problem was that my driving licence had expired.

I was appalled. How can the expiry of my Guernsey driving licence prevent me from coming into Guernsey? Besides which, these clever unconnected States departments had not picked up that my driving licence, which was due to expire at the end of September, was renewed by me before the end of September, so there was no time that I did not have a Guernsey driving licence.

It is just maddening. This is the third time on returning to Guernsey that I have problems with the tracker.

You may well have other readers with horror stories.

JOHN LANGLOIS

Editor’s footnote: Richard Evans, director of the Covid-19 response, responds:

The online Travel Tracker remains a key part of how we manage our borders, as we increasingly reduced travel restrictions for islanders and visitors alike and then started to relax the restrictions.

We are constantly reviewing Travel Tracker to make the process appropriate for the current travel rules and easy for customers to use. We’ve made a lot of changes in recent weeks, which reflect the significant changes to travel rules on 4 October, other smaller changes to the rules since then, and improvements aimed entirely at making the process more customer-friendly.

We know the Travel Tracker has for some customers been complicated, and at times there have been faults that have caused issues, and we’ve worked quickly to rectify them.

We provide support through the week online, by email and by phone to help with any issue and for those who arrive having not filled out the Travel Tracker, the Welcome Team will absolutely help you when you get here and it was only last month their high standards of customer service were recognised at this newspaper’s very own Pride of Guernsey awards.

For the majority of travellers the Travel Tracker and the process of coming through the port are fairly straightforward and don’t take too long – and that’s important because we really do want people to feel welcome from the moment they begin planning their journey.

I’m pleased to say that just last week, the half-term week when many people travelled to and from Guernsey, we welcomed some 10,000 people through our ports with very few challenges.

We have significantly reduced the timeframes for clearing all passengers, including on the largest sailings – the weekend saw a ferry of more than 130 vehicles and around 500 passengers cleared in under an hour.

With respect to this letter, we would really like to be able to offer an explanation or some helpful advice but currently we’re struggling to understand the problems described by the author for their German visitors: the issues described are not ones raised by other customers, we’re not clear on what technical error they’ve encountered or what they mean when they refer to various formulas.

But we will not dismiss them either, we will continue to investigate to see if we can clarify what has happened in this instance and where any problems are identified, we will address them.

Finally, with regard to the author’s own issue with their expired licence, I’m afraid the answer is: yes, you do need to use a valid form of ID to complete the Travel Tracker and expired documents (whether they expired recently or years earlier) are not valid.

The Travel Tracker does accept other documents, such as a passport, if the traveller does not have a valid licence.

We’re sorry this has caused the author such upset and hopefully the support they received from our staff on arrival meant it did not cause any significant delay.

Thankfully we can assure them that it is not an issue other customers have encountered.