Radisson - who's in charge?

What on earth is happening at the new Radisson? One day we are told by the management of the hotel that it will not be opening until just before Christmas. The following day the owners of the hotel come out and refuted this claim, insisting that the hotel will be open in the first week of November.

Apparently the construction team are working overtime to ensure the hotel is finished for handover in October and the owners, headed by Ted Clucas, are insistent that the hotel will open in November. It appears that the statement from the hotel's sales and marketing director, Lisa Stewart, was not agreed with the owners and not surprisingly they are furious that the hotel management announced a change in opening date without their approval.

However, it does beg the question who is actually running the hotel? Normally hotel owners who have signed over the management to another company, do not get involved in the day to day management of the business. Surely the team at the coal face, headed by General Manager Jonathan Huglin, are in the best position to judge when they will be ready to open their doors to paying guests. If this PR cock-up is an example of the relationship twixt owner and manager, then good luck to the team when the hotel does get going!

Think Strawberries - the secret to creating a service culture

There's a seven letter word that is that heart of everything we do in this industry. S E R V I C E.

The fact is that here in Jersey, as with so many destinations in Europe, we're not very good at it. There are many theories on why this is the case. Some argue that it's just not in the European character to smile, look our guests in the eye and satisfy their every need. Others complain that the poor pay does not attract the right calibre of people.

I think it's about leadership. If you have a strong, capable owner/manager who can inspire his or her team then you are more than 50% of the way to achieving your goal. This week I came across a guy who understood all about service and leadership. His name was James Levinson and for several years he ran the New York Plaza and turned it from a loss-making hotel into a hugely successful and profitable enterprise.

How did he achieve this? Well, you can read how. In 1973 at the end of his tenure as CEO of the Plaza, he gave a speech to the American Marketing Association. This hilarious speech describes how he turned the 1400 employees in the hotel into a highly motivated sales team using a programme called 'Think Strawberries'. His approach was to make every single member of staff, from the laundry to the front desk to think and act as if they were hosting a guest in their own home. Over the year's Levinson's approach has been used as a basis for many hospitality businesses training programmes.

I urge you read it - click here to see a transcript. I defy you not to find an idea that you can use in your own business to improve your service standards. Good luck!

Jersey Festivals & Events - are we investing wisely?

Today heralds one of the biggest annual events of the year - The Jersey International Air Display. This magnificent spectacle is one of the last free air shows in Europe and features an extraordinary range of aircraft. It is probably the biggest event of the year in Jersey -watched by more people than even the Battle of Flowers and is now so popular that hotels can virtually guarantee to be full on the back of it.

The show costs almost £250,000 to stage and yesterday the organiser of the event, Mike Higgins, announced that there is a £20,000 shortfall in funding this year. Jersey Tourism put in £100,000 towards the event - a big chunk of their £640,000 event budget. It raises the question as to where the rest of the money goes and how wisely it is invested.

Reading the 2006 Visitor Survey, only 1% of visitors stated that the main purpose of their visit was to attend a festival or event. Even when you take secondary purposes into account, it only rises to 6%. The specific question is asked in the survey: 'Was you decision to visit Jersey influenced at all by a wish to attend any festival or event?' Only 1 person in 8 stated that it was - and this figure must be heavily skewed by The Battle of Flowers & the Air Display

Roughly a third of Tourism's event budget goes to support these two main events. So that leaves around £400k for all the rest - from Walking Weeks to Food Festivals, sports events to Jersey Live. There must be over 50 taking place throughout the year. So how many visitors participate in these events and do they really encourage more visitors to the island? Once again the visitor survey suggests very few - only 8% in 2006 indicated that they had attend a festival or event during their stay.

With further budget cuts in the pipeline, Jersey Tourism are going to have to withdraw support for more small-scale events and focus their attention on the big wins. This makes sense as it is the major events that help put Jersey on the map and attract more visitors. Whilst it's nice to have all the others, their pulling power simply does not justify the investment.

In my opinion we need something big in April or May - but what? There have been plenty of ideas in the past focusing on our maritime heritage, the arts or some big sports event. What about bringing a leg of the Red Bull Air Race here? Perfect for St Aubin's Bay. If you've got an idea why not post a comment here?

Latest score update: Airport 3 : Harbour 0

Not content with announcing one new route in a week, there's more good news from Jersey Airport today. Jet2.com are to start direct services between Jersey & Leeds/Bradford from 25 May 2008. The service will operate 3 days a week (Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday) until 26 October. Fares start from just £28.99 one way and are on sale now. So yet another new low-cost route starts up - and hints of more to come from Jersey Airport Director, Julian Green.

Meanwhile, doom piles upon gloom down at the harbour. Poor old HD Ferries are in trouble again - this time with the French authorities. Apparently a spot check by the Affaires Maritimes on Tuesday revealed 'deficiencies' and the vessel is now in St Malo along with the company's CEO, Chris Howe-Davies to try and resolve the matter.

All HD services are cancelled until at least Friday causing yet more inconvenience to passengers. The impact of all these issues on their forward sales must be dramatic - most people I speak to will not book with the company because of the risk of not travelling.

In the meantime, Condor must be quietly rubbing their hands together with glee. They believe that the vessel HD are using is not capable of operating the route & is a risk (as it almost proved to be on at least two occasions this summer). They may well be right, but as someone commented today, whilst a day return with their car on HD costs £99 - Condor wanted over £200 for the same journey. The route needs competition - but it also needs robust, dependable & safe operators.

Latest score: Jersey Airport 2 : Jersey Harbour 0

More good news from Jersey Airport this week – another new route launches this Saturday and there’s increased capacity on another from next year. Meanwhile the July passenger figures show that arrivals from St Malo hardly grew at all – despite the arrival of HD Ferries this year.

This Saturday, Manx2 – a relatively new start up airline with ex-Rockhopper/Blue Islands chairman, Noel Hayes, at the helm – starts flights to that well-known international airport….er, Gloucester! Initially it will be weekends only, but at the end of October it will fly Friday and Sunday evenings – thereby creating a whole new short-break opportunity to and from the Cotswolds. In order to be sure that everyone knows where the airport is, they have rather grandly re-branded themselves Gloucester (M5) – and to be fair, it is well placed for getting to lots of other places. The 19 seat aircraft will also fly on from Gloucester to the Isle of Man, thereby once again providing a link between the two finance centres.

At the same time, Flybe have announced that from March next year there will be four flights a week to/from Newcastle. The growth in routes is very encouraging and apparently there are more announcements to come over the next few weeks.

While Julian Green and his team continue to achieve good things at the airport, down at the docks, it’s a different story. July’s arrival figures are out and amongst all the positive news, it was surprising to see that arrivals from St Malo had grown by less than 1000 passengers.

Remember that with HD Ferries, capacity on the route dramatically increased. Now I know that HD have had all sorts of problems and some sailings would have been cancelled due to poor weather, but even with a few days excluded the route has hardly grown at all and the market has been split between two operators. It will be interesting to see if August shows improvement – especially as the third operator, Corsaire, started last month.

GST – Exemption for the Tourism Industry

The Jersey Evening Post today carries a special 4 page supplement, commissioned by The States of Jersey, putting forward the argument for GST and explaining why it is needed.

Whilst Jersey residents brace themselves for the new tax which is to be introduced in May 2008, visitors to the island next year will be delighted to find that they will not be charged GST on their accommodation at all.

How come? Back in July, a Jersey tour operator put forward a strong case for their prices to be exempt, as they had to finalise the brochure prices before the final details of GST were agreed and would not be able to adjust these once brochures had been printed. The argument for exemption was forcibly put and resulted in the GST office agreeing to make tour operators only exempt on any bookings for 2008. This news emerged via a letter to the tour operator from the man responsible for co-ordinating the introduction of GST, Steve Lowthorpe, at the end of July.

Immediately it became clear that this decision would cause huge administrative difficulties for accommodation operators and, more importantly, was anti-competitive. The situation as it stood, meant that clients booking with a tour operator would not being charged GST, whilst those booking direct with the hotelier would have to stump up the 3%.

Once these issues had been pointed out to Steve Lowthorpe, several further meetings took place with the Jersey Hospitality Association and today we have been advised of the following by Steve Lowthorpe:

‘To provide the JHA and its members with some level of assurance I can confirm that the Minister of Treasury and Resources has agreed "in principle" to allow all bed / accommodation sales to be zero rated under the transitional arrangements of the GST law. This will be allowed for 2008 only and all such supplies will be subject to the standard rate of GST as from 1st January 2009. This decision will still need to be formalised but hopefully the content of this e-mail will provide certainty and the desired equity of treatment between hotels and tour operators.’

So, now it appears that the whole of the Jersey accommodation sector, as well as tour operators will be GST exempt. A great result for the industry who have battled hard for concessions in the past to no avail and well done to Gerald Fletcher at the JHA for his efforts. I am surprised that the Terry Le Sueur has backed down on this & wonder how other industries will react to the news. Surely there are other sectors which are in similar situations with regard to pricing for 2008?

I may even have a small wager that we could see the GST implementation date put back until January 1st 2009. The States are due to debate the law in October – so we don’t have long to wait.