LAST year, six per cent fewer holidaymakers came to Jersey than in 2008.

This, and an even more significant drop in the number of business travellers, is estimated to have cost the Island £13 million in lost revenue. And this was in spite of advertising and marketing campaigns costing £6.2 million and a £750,000 cash injection from the States to counter the effects of recession.

It remains to be seen how tourism will fare this year, but in addition to other factors which may be undermining our status as a holiday resort, the effects of the Icelandic volcanic eruption on air travel will not have helped matters.

However, we should look beyond one-off problems and changes in the pattern of global tourism to consider whether strategies adopted here at home are acting to the detriment of our holiday industry.

It is entirely possible that what we must now call the experiment in ministerial government has affected the fortunes of tourism. It would, of course, be foolish to claim that all would be well had the committee system of government been retained. Wider issues have come into play irrespective of the nature of States organisation.

However, under the committee system, tourism had what is now called a champion – namely the Tourism president – who devoted his or her attention to a single part of the economy. Now, under the ministerial system, tourism’s notional champion, the Minister for Economic Development, has far wider responsibilities, being expected to fight the corner of all economic sectors.

It would be wrong to accuse Senator Alan Maclean, holder of the Economic Development portfolio, of taking his eye off the tourism ball, but it is legitimate to ask if his skills and abilities are spread too thinly. Defending and developing the interests of a single industry is a tall order; maintaining effective supervision of them all is surely asking too much.

There will be no easy answers for tourism, but it remains a vital pillar of our economy and we should resist at all costs any further decline in its fortunes. A case can therefore be made for greater political concentration on its future. The same might be said for another pillar of the economy, agriculture, which, because of a truly awful potato season, has suffered its own version of the Icelandic volcano crisis.

It is widely acknowledged that the ministerial system needs, at the very least, tuning, and most radically, total revision. Making sure that industries other than finance receive legitimate tender loving care would not be a bad place to start either of these processes.