WHEN I went into the public scrutiny hearing on Monday, I was pretty convinced that a Public

Private Partnership was the best way forward for Jersey’s tourism industry. When I came out, I wasn’t so sure. In fact I thought it might just be akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

There’s still an obvious need to ‘do something’ to boost prospects for the Island’s second most important industry, but I doubt that fiddling around with how marketing and support for tourism is organised will make much difference.

To begin with very little will change if a PPP is introduced. Policy will still be in the hands of the Minister for Economic Development. He will still be in charge of the purse strings,
certainly as far as public money is concerned, and the new board running the PPP will have to agree their business plan with the minister or they won’t get any taxpayers’ money. The
Economic Development Department will even have to retain some tourism staff to continue to oversee the industry.

On the other hand, the experienced staff at the Tourism Department, who are generally acknowledged to be doing a good job, will have to transfer to the new Public Private Partnership at unknown future terms and conditions, and with limited prospects for career development.

It’s not as though the PPP will save much money – indeed quite the reverse; the new structure will cost more than £1m over two years. The Economic Affairs scrutiny panel was assured that cutting staff wasn’t the object of the exercise, in any case, and that the position of employees is being given priority. So why bother with a PPP, when all you are likely to get is the same people doing the same job but under a different structure?

Perhaps it’s the new organisation itself that’s going to generate savings and/or more money, fresh ideas and a new more successful approach to marketing the Island. But no-one, except the odd newspaper columnist, has ever questioned the quality of the marketing undertaken by the current Tourism Department. Indeed even the critics can’t complain about what Tourism’s marketing experts do. The problem is they don’t do enough of it, and that’s not their fault.

So perhaps the benefits of the PPP will flow from the much closer involvement of private
industry in marketing the Island. But they are already very closely involved, and it doesn’t need a new organisation to improve those links.

The PPP would be a cracking idea, of course, if the private sector was to suddenly stump up more cash to help the effort. That’s hardly likely at a time like this, although they will obviously continue to be keen to develop joint marketing campaigns where they can see obvious commercial benefits. But they do that now. It doesn’t need a PPP.

The scrutiny panel was even told about how the Jersey Hospitality Association had contributed £50,000 last year in what you might call ‘generic’ funds to help boost the Island’s marketing campaign. That was obviously a very good sign and, you will note, was done without the need for a PPP.

What problems the industry faces will also not be helped much by a PPP. One of the most difficult problems is getting the price right, and the fact that the fall in tourism numbers is not worse than it is, is down to heavy discounting.

That’s no way to run a tourism industry, and although some sectors are very good at getting the price right in order to capture a sale, others fail to convert the large number of
enquiries generated by good marketing. But would this be any different under a PPP?

It might even be worse because a PPP board might not have the resources or the inclination to try to raise standards amongst members of the industry who are, after all, competitors.

So I’m not so sure about the need for a new structure, although I would probably have to agree that it’s unlikely to do much harm. However whether we should be spending time and money on it now is another matter entirely, because the actual commercial benefits in the short to medium term seem to be doubtful.

What is much more crystal clear is that the problem with Jersey’s tourism marketing is not a lack of involvement by the industry, it’s a lack of cash.

The budget earmarked specifically for tourism marketing has gone down at a time when the industry continues to struggle and needs more bums on seats. The PPP won’t change that.
It’s no help pointing out that something like 41% of EDD’s budget goes on looking after tourism, and only 15%-16% on the finance industry. The money spent on the airport may also be largely for tourism’s benefit, although it’s really for the good of the whole Island, so you can hardly say that tourism is being treated as a special case.

No, it has to compete for taxpayers’ support along with everything else the States spends money on, and guess what? There’s even less money available now.So how can spending more taxpayers’ money on tourism be justified in these difficult times? Perhaps we could learn something from our fellow Crown Dependencies.

Both Guernsey and Isle of Man tourism actually had quite a good year in 2009. Both
increased visitor numbers, while poor Jersey’s fell by 3.8%. This fact is not often mentioned when tourism leaders talk about Jersey doing relatively well compared to the likes of Spain and Italy.

I don’t know why the smaller islands did better, particularly as investment in hotels and
infrastructure in both Guernsey and the Isle of Man is pretty small. So Jersey should be benefitting from the huge investment that’s been made here. The fact that it hasn’t perhaps indicates the crucial role of marketing.

A critical point about the other islands is that the economies of both Guernsey and the Isle of Man are considerably more diversified than that of Jersey, which is dangerously reliant on financial services and on one particular sector, the banking industry. That would seem to be why the other Crown Dependencies have seen their economies continue to grow, while Jersey’s is contracting. That’s the bottom line of diversification.

Supporting tourism is therefore more important than just protecting businesses and jobs in hotels and catering. It’s one of the very few options we have for diversifying the economy and unless more effort is put into helping it to grow, the whole economy will suffer. That’s with or without a PPP.
By Peter Body, editor Business Brief magazine