Dear Industry,

Well, long time no here,

As I haven’t heard much from you, I can presume that we have all had a decent “season” despite the weather !!!.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year my focus for 2007 would be on transport links and general marketing of the island with commerce and employment and it seems that we have seen the shoots of progress at last.

New Air Routes.

As you may already be aware, Blue Islands have forged ahead with new links to various destinations and hopefully, we will see other airlines following on. We do have to bear in mind how attractive the island is to other airlines be this in terms of numbers, landing costs or run way but there does seem to be interest out there and I hope that the various states departments will give Commerce & Employment full support in making things happen .

Marketing

I would love to hear how you felt this years marketing campaign has worked for you, numbers for enquiries from Visit Guernsey seem to be up and there was an increase in business figures for July this year but nothing beats what you have to say!  

Housing Licences.

For some time now, we, as an industry have been unsure how, or who is entitled to what licence and for how long. As an industry, we all get frustrated at loosing a valuable well trained member of staff as they have to leave the island for three months after investing time and resources developing them. I have had early discussions with the Housing Department to try and come up with a working framework to understand both parties needs which will hopefully put us all in the picture.

Caravans on the Island

Yes I know that this has nothing to do with most of us but its in the general interest of the tourism industry so back it fully. When I first took on this role 2 years ago this was one area that I felt was a bit of a no brainer, why let caravan sail over to Jersey when they could be coming here. After much lobbying, the feedback from the states was that it was not a “priority”. You may ask yourself what is a priority then but I was please to see that at last this area has provoked some media attention. Lets hope the situation is resolved in time for next season.

General News.

Anybody employing a chambermaid from the Roquettes hotel may want to ring them to check out references.

Contact

Well that’s the news at the moment but if you have any other points to raise then you know where to contact me

c.sharp@lafregatehotel.com

or on the Chamber forum at http://www.guernseychamber.com