ECONOMIC Development have set aside nearly £900,000 of their budget for ‘route development’.

The allocation is included in the department’s business plan for 2009, which includes a breakdown of how the total £16.4 million budget will be parcelled out. The route development funding has been taken away from two other items: £647,050 will come from tourism marketing and £230,000 from the events budget.

Tourism marketing will still get the largest chunk of £3.5 million and Jersey Finance will receive £1.8 million, including an additional £750,000 ‘plan plus’, partly to set up several offices in the Far East, Asia and London.

Chief executive officer Mike King said that 2009 would be ‘one of the most challenging years ever faced by Jersey’s economy’, in particular for the tourism sector. He said that the expansion of the air route network had been a key factor in 2006 and 2007 and that further financial support would be used to maintain and increase air arrivals in an environment where airlines were ‘suffering profound impacts related to the global economic climate’.