HD Ferries - is patience wearing thin?

Following weeks of delays, collisions and technical problems, last weekend Jersey Harbours, finally lost their patience with HD Ferries and withdrew their licence to operate the route between Jersey and St Malo.

The vessel has been running on only 3 of its 4 engines for some time and as a result, had been experiencing difficulties in berthing in Jersey. This culminated in a fairly serious collision with a rival Condor Ferries craft in July which caused damage to the HD ferry and caused it to be withdrawn from service for some days whilst repairs were made.

Then last weekend, it happened again and this time, the harbour authorities had no choice but to suspend their licence on Friday, resulting in hundreds of passengers having to find room on Condor at the last minute. Needless to say, Condor were only too delighted to take all this business - and to charge HD clients through the nose to transfer.

Surprisingly, despite all this, the goodwill that HD Ferries has built up in a relatively short time seems to be carrying the operator through this very tricky period. Take a look at their website and see how many messages of support have been posted. It seems that Condor's monopolistic position on the UK ferry route and subsequent high fares, rankles with many. I suspect that memories also linger of the demise of the much-loved Emeraude Ferries - caused in part by Condor's marketing muscle. Recent comments by Rob Provan, Condor's MD who suggested HD Ferries vessel was not designed to operate on the St Malo route, did not help.

The good news for HD fans is that, this afternoon, they announced that the resumption of services from this Saturday morning. Let's hope they can maintain the service without further problems. It is important to have competition on this route to keep prices low - but patience will run our eventually if the service suffers further delays or cancellations.

Jersey - Nowhere land?

Yet again last weekend, I turned to the travel section of one of the national daily papers to find a fantastic article on the best places to surf in Britain – and once again there’s no mention of Jersey.

The week before there was a feature on the best places to enjoy a short break and minimise your carbon footprint. As usual there was plenty of coverage for Paris, Dublin & Amsterdam. Jersey must come to the top of the carbon-friendly pile, with a short flying time and access available by low-carbon ferries, but again the island fails to register on the travel editor’s radar.

It’s been niggling away at me for some time that Jersey, literally, seems to fall between the two stalls of ‘Britain’ and ‘Abroad’. As far as the domestic holiday scene is concerned, presumably Jersey is overlooked because it is not part of the British mainland and is not accessible by road. This despite the fact that it’s quicker to get here from most parts of the UK than it is to reach Cornwall.

When it comes to the overseas angle I can just hear these journalists saying, ‘Well Jersey isn’t really abroad is it? It’s part of Britain and not really culturally different enough.’

So how do we address this? I know Mike Tait and his team at Jersey Tourism battle hard to get our little voice heard, but it’s a tough task. We simply have to keep plugging away and reminding them that when it comes to features on the British Isles we need to be included.

Of course, sometimes, it can work in our favour. Last week Mothercare published a survey which rubbished British holiday resorts, describing them generally as a rip-off. Again, the Channel Islands were excluded – perhaps this time to our benefit.

It really is a case of ‘Nearer to France, closer to home.’ In other words floating in the middle of nowhere!