The future's bright....the future's orange!

It's been widely anticipated and much hoped for, but today it's confirmed. Easyjet are to start flying to Jersey in 2008.

Easyjet is Europe's leading low-fares airline and along with Ryanair dominate the market. For almost a decade the island has been wishing that it could be in a position to attract one of the 'big two' to fly to the island. Now that wish has come true and from March next year the famous orange livery will be touching down in Jersey.

Flights from Liverpool, (which has not previously been served by a scheduled airline) commence in March and from London Luton a month later. The Luton route will be operated by an Airbus 319 (similar to that operated by BMI on Heathrow) and Liverpool by a 737-300. The combined capacity is huge - 200,000 extra seats in the first year. Given how successful Thomsonfly were on Luton, Easyjet should have no problems taking up where they left off, whilst Liverpool provides access to a whole new market in the North West and North Wales.

Not surprisingly Philip Ozouf, Alan Maclean & Julian Green are cock-a-hoop. Of course, attracting Easyjet will not have come cheap & more incentive deals will have been struck to secure the routes, but the airline would not have agreed to start flying to Jersey unless they believed there was a strong commercial case for doing so.

Right now the key to achieving continued growth in our industry is having as much access as possible. The arrival of Easyjet is a terrific fillip to us all.

Thomsonfly - we're not smiling

I thought it was all going too smoothly for Julian Green and his team at Jersey Airport.

After a year that saw a number of new routes & significant growth in passenger numbers, we've been brought down to earth with a bump by the news that Thomsonfly are to cease operating from Doncaster, Luton & Cardiff from March 2008. This will leave Coventry as the only route operated by the airline - and who knows for how much longer.

This is disastrous for Jersey's tourism industry on 2 counts. First Thomsonfly achieved significant growth in volumes this year, with a total of over 120,000 passengers carried to/from Jersey. The airline had built up a 12% share of the market - and now it will all but disappear. More importantly, in my opinion, Thomsonfly led the market in bringing low cost fares to the island. Not just a few seats on each flight, but a significant proportion of the aircraft's capacity was sold at low fares and often these fares were available right up to departure.

As we know, this summer's weather was one of the poorest for many years, but despite that late bookings for July & August were stronger than ever. It is my belief (and that of others I have spoken to) that this demand was being driven by Thomsonfly and other airlines who were strongly promoting Jersey in their advertising as a low-cost destination - in effect doing the tactical marketing job for the island. The fact that visitors could still book fares of £70.00 or less return in peak season was a major factor in encouraging them to visit Jersey thi summer.

So now Thomsonfly are flying off to sunnier climes, what can Julian and his team do to secure an alternative operator on these routes? I am sure the Airport team will be working hard on this but the key is that whoever is persuaded (or incentivised!) to do so, is committed to providing low fares.

Statistics are like bikinis.......

One of the really great things about Jersey Tourism is the preponderance of statistics they make available online through their website. It’s great to be able to access all sorts of data on-line and usually the information is updated quickly and efficiently. For example June’s arrival figures are already up there – showing a healthy 3% increase overall & we should not have to wait too long to discover if this increase is matched by a rise in staying visitors.

June Arrivals

The figures also allow certain conclusions to be drawn. For example, 3756 passengers arrived from Heathrow in June. With 2 BMI flights a day and an average capacity of about 120 seats – that produces an average load factor of 52%. I wonder how happy BMI are with that figure after 3 months of operating the route? And are taxpayers seeing a return on the investment made into securing the route in the first place? We will never know because we have no idea of the size of the subsidy.

By contrast, let’s look at Luton – from where Thomsonfly started operating in May. The route provides one arrival a day, but has carried 2655 passengers. With a smaller aircraft, that’s a much more encouraging load factor of around 80%. I appreciate that there are big differences in fare levels. (I flew to Luton in May for just £40.00 return including tax), but if volume is a key requisite for tourism growth then I believe Thomsonfly should receive the bouquets. And I bet the route subsidy has cost a lot less.

Overall arrivals from London Airports are up by an impressive 12% so far this year, so that’s good news for everyone in the industry.

2006 Visitor Survey

Then there’s the latest Staying Leisure Visitor Survey – in short a very long questionnaire sent to visitors after they return home asking for their views on their stay in Jersey. At face value a good piece of work that provides useful trend analysis of visitors’ characteristics & their perceptions of Jersey.

And yet – whilst the survey tries to obtain a cross-section of visitors, there is no sampling by age range or socio-economic profiling. So if a higher proportion of questionnaires are returned by the 55+ age group this could give a very one-sided perception of the delivery of our tourist product. The survey does break down the findings by age group, but the sizes of the samples for younger age groups may be too small to be credible.

I know that First Research who produced the survey, have many years of experience in producing this report – the guys behind it used to manage the statistics unit at Jersey Tourism. The report is of extremely high quality – but in my view poses as many questions as it answers.

A US business professor, Aaron Levenstein got it about right when he said ‘Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.’ If we are going to base future investment decisions on today’s data, then we need to make sure that the numbers don’t lie.