One month in - how's 2007 looking?

January is behind us for another year - thank goodness! New Year resolutions broken, Celebrity Big Brother long-forgotten & the first pay cheque since Christmas swallowed by all the post-Christmas debts.

But the first month of the year is still critical to the travel industry. OK - the days when we had hardly swallowed the last of the Christmas pudding, before picking up the phone to book our summer holiday may have gone. However for many, January is still one of the busiest months of the year for bookings & sets the tone for the months ahead.

So is it going be a Shilpa or a Jade year for you? Did the 2 weeks of bad weather in the UK affect sales? Is credit card debt preventing people booking? What about interest rate rises impacting on consumer's disposable (i.e holiday) spend? Or has Tourism's new TV campaign launched last week brought a boost to your sales?

My own impression is that there has been a bit of a dip in January compared to last year, but not a great one & it is probably to do with a drop in bookings coming from traditional channels - i.e. travel agency bookings via tour operators.

Anyway I thought it might be interesting to get a rough feel for how it's looking. If you are a hotelier, guest house or self-catering operator, travel agent, tour operator, transport operator or anyone else in a position to judge, then please click on one of the options in the survey below and it will give us all a very rough idea of how the early booking period has performed. It's completely anonymous so you won't be giving any trade secrets away!

Jersey - Heathrow to be reinstated!

The best news so far this year! BMI (the grown up version of BmiBaby who currently operate to Jersey) are going to recommence flights from Heathrow to Jersey. 2 flights a day are due to start operating in March using an Airbus.

This is fantastic news for the industry - the international connections through Heathrow are so much better than Gatwick and should enable Jersey Tourism to boost our international visits, as well as putting Jersey back on the map in West London.

The official announcement is due tomorrow, but to read more about it look at Channel TV's online article

TripAdvisor - Business creator or just a scam?

You may have read this week that The Atlantic Hotel has won the accolade of top UK luxury hotel in 2006 on TripAdvisor. Congratulations to Paddy Burke and his colleagues out west - on top of the Michelin Star awarded to Ocean Restaurant this week, it's a great achievement for the hotel and of PR benefit both to the hotel & Jersey.

The success of TripAdvisor is well documented- 5 million reviews covering more than 220,000 hotels and attractions and more than 20 million unique visitors each month. There is no doubt that consumer-driven content sites or Web 2.0 as it is known in the techie world has taken over from the traditional hotel guides as the principle way in which on-line travel purchasers are choosing where to stay. Both the RAC & Les Routiers hotel guides have stopped publishing as result of consumers switching to websites for supposedly 'unbiased' reports.

Recently however, there has been quite a bit of negative publicity about these sites, with investigations showing that owners and their friends were publishing their own fake reviews in order to boost their hotel rating and position and even worse publishing damning reviews of competitor properties in order to drop them down the chart.

The Sunday Times conducted an undercover investigation in November which proved:

• 'Guests' who had never stayed at a hotel can boost or depress ratings by posting fake reviews


• Poorly rated establishments can lift their reputations from one to four stars in a matter of hours by posting fictional reviews


• Some establishments attempt to damage the reputations of rivals.

You can read the article in full on the Times website. Now I am not suggesting at all that this is common, but I am aware of a couple of establishments in Jersey which have posted their own reviews. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with this if you can get away with it, but it does mean that consumers cannot be 100% confident in the feedback.

Last week alongside the accolades for The Atlantic, TripAdvisor published their Top 10 dirtiest hotels in the UK - happily there were no Jersey entries! Personally, I have used the site a lot to plan trips & so far have not been disappointed. Anyone else had a good or bad experience of user-generated content sites?

Confusion reigns with Jersey's new accommodation grading scheme

Oh dear, what on earth is going on with the new grading scheme? It would appear that once again communication has broken down between the Jersey Hospitality Association and Jersey Tourism. Take a look at David Warr's post on his blog - Warr on Words - and you'll see what I mean. I know this is a new scheme, but there's no excuse for this sort of cock-up.

Jersey's 2007 Advertising Campaign moves Closer to Home

So finally we get to see Tourism's TV advert that has been in production for the past few months and that will start airing on Friday, 19th January. It was clearly much anticipated as 130 tourism industry souls managed to drag themselves down to Cineworld for 9am on a wet and windy Wednesday to see the commercial in big screen glory. So was it worth it?

The answer is 'Yes'. It feels good to be back on mainstream TV, building a brand image for Jersey. I have always argued that this is Tourism's key task - make people want to come here. This commercial achieves that by mixing inspiring and emotive images coupled with a voice over that is rich and welcoming (reminds me of the guy who did Mr Kipling's 'Exceedingly Good Cakes'). It's beautifully shot, manages to combine all the key images of the island and cram them into 30 secs and yet does so whilst maintaining a relaxed pace.

And what's this? The resurrection of probably Jersey's most successful slogan - well half of it anyway. 'Closer to Home' is a strong message amidst the growing clamour over the carbon emissions from air travel. It also appeals to families who do not want to endure the terror of a 3 hour flight with sprogs who refuse to sit still for more that 2 seconds.

No need to dwell on the rest of the advertising campaign - which is less impressive. The TV commercial will have an impact. Now it's down to all of us to turn those enquiries into sales. You can view the commercial for yourself and make up your own mind by visiting Jersey Tourism's Marketing microsite and click on TV advert.

St Malo - Jersey ferry routes. Here we go again....

mm,

Like London buses, you don't see one for months and then 2 come along at once. So it is with St Malo ferries. In the space of a couple of days last week we learnt that 2 new operators are to start services this summer.

HD ferries (what does HD stand for - anyone know?!) are a new operator using a vessel built 8 years ago. Starting mid-March with 1 departure a day in each direction and a vessel that carries 400 passengers & 100 cars - that's 180,000 passenger spaces available from mid-March to end of September.

Then we've got Corsaire, who until 2003 were owned by Emeraude. They currently pootle around The Bay of St Malo on sightseeing tours, but have now decided to enter the big boy's world of ferry operations with a new 204 passenger-only vessel, currently being built in Australia. Corsaire plan to operate 1-3 services a day from June to September, so conservatively that will add 100,000 more passenger spaces.

Existing operator Condor will continue to operate the route as well. Not sure how many departures, but at least 1 a day in each direction with say another 400 capacity on each. So let's say in total that there will be 500,000 spaces available between April & September to & from St Malo.

So what's changed since 2005, when Emeraude sank without trace? The demise of Emeraude was in no doubt due to a combination of over-capacity on the route & weaker marketing on their part. HD Ferries have already launched their booking system (interestingly another part of their parent company - The 2morrow Group is a ferry reservations distribution system called Aferry!) and their fare structure is based on the low-cost airline model. The earlier you book & the less busy the crossing, the less you pay. If fares are low enough, it should also encourage more frequent, impulsive travel, which I believe is a real trick to turn within the Jersey-based market. 'What shall we do today - paint the bedroom or lunch in St Malo?'

Very little is known about Corsaire's plans, but their big advantage is that they are a French operator, well known in the St Malo area and probably in the best position to take advantage of the day trip market.

And don't forget we've got daily services to Normandy with Manche Iles Express, who are introducing a bigger ferry in 2007. It's all shaping up to be an interesting year on this route. I cannot believe that demand is going to satisfy such a huge supply - but there is certainly going to be one winner. Joe Public. Get planning those day trips to Paris now!

The Blob is back!

I thought it had all gone a bit quiet around the new Jersey brand. Following the dreadful response to the first design (is it a bird, is it a plane or is it just a gold blob?) from just about everyone, it was back to the drawing board for the design team.

Now, according to the JEP, a further £30k has been spent on researching what I assume is a revised identity. A research company delighting in the name of Voodoo carried out research amongst various interest groups before Christmas and now according to David de Carteret, Head of Tourism, the new logo is ready for Ministers' approval at a meeting on January 12th.

I don't know what the new image looks like, or indeed if it has changed very much from the last one. I can't get hold of a copy of either version so am unable to share it with you. However the original image bears some striking similarities to a well known soap brand shown here. There seemed to be a bit of difficulty with the original slogan 'Life enriching', as it made us all out to be fat cats. Personally I did not have a problem with this line, but we may not have to wait too long to find out if it has been replaced.

Given that the whole thing has already cost the taxpayer £200k, let's hope it's acceptable to everyone. I sensed a note of frustration in David de C.'s comment when asked what would happen if it wasn't given the nod. 'I don't know what we shall do', he said! Sounds like this could be his own voodoo.

Global warming - opportunity or threat for Jersey?

New year - new resolution. What's yours for 2007? The annual crystal ball-gazing by the media that seems to take place around the turn of the year, focused even more than usual on our environment and the impact of global warming. Whether it be icebergs floating off New Zealand or the re-emergence of El Nino, the impact of the way we abuse our planet is higher up the agenda than ever. UK pointy-heads have predicted that 2007 will be the warmest year ever recorded.

So could this be an opportunity for Jersey's tourism industry? A key plank of our tourism marketing is the natural beauty and relative unspoilt nature of our island. However contrast this with the somewhat disturbing statistic that (according to our Environment Dept) Jersey has the highest level of car-ownership in the world! The same department has put in place a list of priorities and actions - you can read a copy of the report 'The State of Jersey' here.

Scanning through the Locumconsulting report, I could not find any direct reference to the environment and our ability to build on our 'greenness'. Surely Green Lanes, Durrell & RAMSAR sites provide a platform for a strong marketing message? But what can individual operators and accommodation providers do? How about tour operators adding a charge to their prices to cover the impact of clients flying to Jersey? How many hoteliers use low-energy light bulbs?

Global warming - do you think we should take it seriously or is it just a load of hot air?