HAVING just had a few days’ break in Morocco, my mind naturally turns to tourism. Not that there’s much similarity between Morocco and Jersey in this respect. One has a thriving tourism industry and the other doesn’t.

That may be a little harsh on all those people working so hard to turn around the Island’s tourism sector. There’s a lot about the industry that is extremely successful and perhaps even world class. Well, it would have to be to have any chance of competing in a global industry. But there aren’t many people who would claim that tourism is in good heart at the moment.

That’s not what we were told at the forum of industry leaders last week. We were told that things were generally under control except for the financial crisis which has knocked the industry off its course of steady improvement.
I’m not so sure.

In the absence of any detailed research, I don’t think anyone could say with confidence that tourism would have done well this year had the bottom not fallen out of the financial markets. Visitor arrivals might have been up marginally but I’m told by some leading hoteliers that yields are down. A lot of new beds have become available following the uncoordinated expansion in top-grade hotels and there are not enough people to fill those beds or any others.

Tourism leaders obviously have a good point when they bemoan the regular crises that have hit the industry and over which we have no control. The pound is either too expensive or too cheap, people are scared of flying but won’t get on a ferry either – there’s always something. As the keynote speaker at last week’s forum said, this has been the story in Britain as well, with tourism being badly affected by regular disasters such as foot and mouth disease.

But the position is different in Jersey. Britain’s tourism industry is generally going in the right direction when a crisis knocks it off course. Jersey’s industry has not been going in the right direction, and any crisis just makes matters worse. The bottom line is that tourism is not doing as well as some people seem to think, and it’s not doing well because the States don’t invest enough money and effort in it.

Mind you, a casual observer would not have reached this conclusion had they been at the recent tourism conference. They would have believed that there are certainly challenges ahead but that we have a plan and there’s a good chance that it will work.

Perhaps the unjustified confidence is because the industry itself appears to have given up trying to get anything more out of the States. They seem to have lost sight of the bigger picture completely. So while the conference discussed whether the Battle of Flowers should be held on a different day of the week, only one person had the temerity to stand up and suggest that perhaps the Battle needed a total revamp and should be moved to a different time of the year. The conference seemed to be more concerned about whether moving the day of the Battle would clash with the change-over day for visitors. Welcome to 21st century tourism.

The audience was either too polite or resigned to the inevitable, because unlike previous years no one stood up and complained that the tourism budget is not big enough to make any real difference and in any case, what is the plan?
Tourism officials were quick to reassure the industry that budgets are flexible and money is available where needed.

Yes, they can move items around but the total available to support tourism has gone down, when it should have gone up. Even the much-heralded, and much-delayed, public-private partnership will not have more money to spend, unless it comes from the industry itself. The industry has already spent something like £300m on new hotel beds and other facilities. What has the contribution of the States been?

But we’re reassured by officials that the £5m of taxpayers’ money which will go into the PPP compares very favourably with the £1m or so that goes into Jersey Finance Ltd, which is held up as the successful model for this kind of thing.

Well, to begin with, I’m not so sure that the model is particularly successful. Yes, Jersey Finance does a very good job, but it is driven by its members and its members want JFL to go out and get them more business.
So there is little time to try and improve Jersey’s reputation around the world, which should be one of their top priorities.

But in any case it’s wrong to suggest that tourism will be getting more public support than finance because of the £5m put into the PPP compared to the £1m put into JFL. We are all supporting the finance industry to the tune of £100m.

So even on purely economic terms, tourism might deserve a little more. In any case even those people who don’t see the industry as a natural economic activity for the Island should appreciate the value of tourism as an insurance policy in case anything goes wrong with finance. New types of business such as intellectual property and e-business could certainly replace some of the revenue lost if there is a problem with finance, but it is tourism that provides the demand for air and ferry services, restaurants and quality infrastructure that we all enjoy.

Like all insurance policies, it’s not wise to cut corners. You can’t do it on the cheap, as the States has been trying to do with tourism. What is desperately needed, even before the PPP comes into existence, is a well-thought-out plan to grow tourism. We’ve drawn up these plans before on several occasions. But this time we should put some money into it so that there’s a chance it will actually happen.
Peter Body is editor of
Business Brief magazine