A LUNCH for the hospitality industry this week which focused on DFDS and travel links could best be described as a cathartic process for all involved.
It seemed to provide an end-of-year opportunity for people to get things off their chest – an indicator being the lengthy preambles that preceded every question asked by the audience of the panel: Economic Development Minister Kirsten Morel; DFDS’s man in Jersey, Chris Parker; and Jersey Hospitality Association co-chair Marcus Calvani.
Some contributors’ preambles didn’t even get to a question; they just had an itch – right between the shoulder blades – and the lunch had gifted them the verbal equivalent of a nimble backscratcher. Their relief was palpable.
If the intention of the JHA in holding this event was to turn the Royal Yacht’s Celestial Hall into a collective psychiatrist’s chair, then it was a clever move.
Although some would have invariably left the room still yearning for those heady days of Condor reliability, whenever those were, the message from Mr Calvani – charged with summing up the event at the end – was positive: with DFDS on the high seas and Loganair in the even higher skies – the Island can put rocky 2025 behind it and stride into 2026 with more optimism.
The meeting was spikey at times, which is always a possibility when Deputy Morel is involved. On bigger stages, it is usually the political head who tends to face the flak, but in Jersey it appears to be a delegated function, with Deputy Morel often left to defend the tough calls.
Not everyone will agree with him but, to be fair, he does have the courage of his convictions and is willing to tackle an issue head on. It can lead to tense moments but what is politics without theatre? Isn’t debate, dialectic, inquiry, and challenge the lifeblood of democratic discourse? Tension needn’t be awkward.
“No one is under more scrutiny than me,” Deputy Morel told the audience after an edgy encounter with former Condor Island head Steve Bailey, not asking for sympathy but – perhaps in his mind – a bit of slack.
His message, to paraphrase liberally, is: the previous operator was inches from going the way of Blue Islands; my mea culpa is that I should have realised earlier on that Guernsey was never going to jump ship; DFDS not only promise but are contractually obliged to spend £300m on three new ships and when they arrive (by the end of 2028, 2030 and 2031) we will all be better off; and these growing pains (because I mistakenly thought that we and Guernsey were on the same page) will soon be a distant memory.
Telling people that the future will be better is what politicians do, but it is still a tough ask when the current facts are that visitor numbers are down, the existing fleet is a bit meh, freight costs have risen for larger importers who previously enjoyed a bulk discount, and DFDS’s messaging, by their own admission, hasn’t been great.
The lunch wasn’t all a farrago of conflicting opinions. We learnt that there will only be one ramp available in Saint Malo next season and, at the moment, Brittany Ferries’ departures to Guernsey and the UK, and DFDS’s to Jersey are all within minutes of each other – an impossible situation that will need to be rectified.
Also, we learnt that – contrary to speculation that when it comes to Jersey, potential French visitors and tourist boards look more generally in our general direction – Jersey actually remains two-thirds of the Channel Island market from France, and lots of people love us over there.
We also learnt that DFDS is installing refrigeration plugs on the Tarifa Jet to support Jersey businesses exporting chilled goods to France, it is replacing all seats on the Levante Jet, it is introducing a 15% ‘Islander discount’ for frequent travellers which won’t include a membership fee, and there will be more longer-stay day-trips to Saint Malo next summer.
Group bookings for next year on DFDS already exceed the total number of passengers carried this year, the audience was told.
When it came to audience questions, Mr Bailey stood to compare prices between Brittany Ferries and DFDS, arguing that the former is significantly cheaper. Both Deputy Morel and Mr Parker retorted that the Danish carrier had to make money in order to reinvest in its fleet; something Brittany Ferries’ contract bid had barely mentioned, they said.
A reasonable response for some but Mr Bailey didn’t look convinced.
‘Team Jersey’ was mentioned a few times – not in relation to Charlie Parker’s long-forgotten effort to foster civil service togetherness – but in respect to a call for greater unity and, just maybe, in response to Guernsey’s perceived superior cohesion.
That said, our Sarnian cousins and Brittany Ferries were also pitched as friends, particularly when it came to marketing our islands to an international audience, who – as we know – have no idea nor care about the difference between ‘Langlois’ and ‘Langlois’.
After a lengthy discussion, which exceeded its 3pm finish by over 30 minutes, the ever-eloquent Mr Calvani summed things up, arguing that “without question” the Island is a better place than it was earlier this year, on sea and in the air.
So, despite the few spikey interchanges and no-doubt more debate to come about the appropriate use of public funds, hospitality collectively slid its chips over to DFDS and Loganair at the lunch, backing the Government’s choices.
Everyone will have to wait to see if the gamble pays off.
