AROUND 50 to 60 DFDS employees were involved in putting together the bid to win the ferry contract for Jersey. And the firm will establish a Jersey-route headquarters to handle cancellations and crises, newly appointed route director Chris Parker said.
The company aims to sign a lease for Harbour offices within the coming weeks, according to Mr Parker.
DFDS were picked last week to provide Jersey with ferries to France and the UK for the next 15 years – taking over from Condor after a tender process that started as a joint exercise between Jersey and Guernsey, but ended with different providers for each island.
Mr Parker visited Jersey last week to meet organisations such as the Jersey Hospitality Association and the Chamber of Commerce, meetings which he said were “very constructive” and where he shared draft timetables with attendees.
The full timetables are still being developed, along with a host of other logistical questions – but the company sought to reassure Islanders, stressing that all hands are on deck to put together the Jersey routes as quickly as possible.
“It is a very complicated process in many ways, because it is about establishing partnerships with ports,” Mr Parker said.
“It’s about finding the right vessels, it’s finding the right crews, it’s making sure that we have the staff to check in, but it’s also all of the back-office functions. It’s making sure that we have booking systems online and so forth.
“Thankfully, I might be employee number one, but I do have the resource to lean into in the wider organisation. So I had a call yesterday, for example, with our IT director, where we ran through what’s required.
“Pretty much everything else is going to be dropped to focus on Jersey, to make sure that we get it done as quickly as possible. And the same will happen across the piece.”
Mr Parker described having previously opened the Rosslare to Dunkirk route within a matter of weeks after Brexit – inviting a school group to test the route before making it available to passengers.
He handled crises including the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in 2010 and IT failures in Dover and explained that communicating with passengers was key.
Bad weather and cancellations happen, he said, but a local team would be “responsive when there are issues” and would plan ahead as soon as weather reports come in.
“It’s not that weather causes issues, it’s how you’re reacting, which is very important.
“So that’s the bit that we want to be here for, to help be part of the solution and not causing the problem.”
Mr Parker acknowledged that tourism businesses are “behind the booking curve” after the tender was awarded months later than hoped for.
“The focus is on: let’s get the schedules right, let’s get the pricing right, let’s get the booking engine up and running. Then we will have a marketing push to try to claw back some of the lost time because we’re very conscious, on behalf of local businesses, particularly in the hospitality sector, that we’ve lost a chunk of the booking curve here, so we need to go out with very strong messaging about Jersey being a destination.”
He added: “We will be working hard over the next few months, and we’ll be ready in April. And we want to be that reliable partner for everybody in the Island.”
