JERSEY and Guernsey’s governments need to work better together to address gaps in inter-island travel, the owner of small ferry operator has said – despite the ongoing difficulties boosting his business.
Water Taxi CI operates trips between Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm from St Helier.
The firm has just bought a new boat, which will enable it to “bolster” its scheduled service offerings and increases its resilience in case technical difficulties prevent a sailing.
Last week, Economic Development Minister Gerald Voisin said that DFDS’s high-speed inter-island trial last year reported passenger numbers that were “significantly below commercially sustainable levels”.
Deputy Voisin added that he would “prefer” market-led solutions over a government contract.
Max Boleat, founder of Water Taxi CI, said the Islands still needed larger ferry operators running between the main islands. He sees his outfit as complementing those services, providing links and creating a network tourists can island-hop on.
“Jersey is in a really unique and strong position where it can really place itself as a travel hub. I think that’s something we’d very much like to get involved in a conversation on,” Mr Boleat said.
A large part of its business this year had been pan-island tourism, with people hopping across the Channel Islands.
Mr Boleat praised the Ports of Jersey’s work in attracting new routes from KLM and Jet2, which has “created business” for his company.
However, he said that the lack of inter-island services had affected his customers from abroad, adding: “I think that the big disconnect that we’ve seen between Jersey and Guernsey, particularly in relation to inter-island travel, has had a massive effect on people towards the tail end of the season.”
When Islands Unlimited cut its season short after an engine issue, the fragility of travel between the Channel Islands was highlighted.
Mr Boleat continued: “The feedback that we’ve certainly had is that they [tourists] enjoyed their time here and they’ve loved it, but they might not come back based on how difficult and costly the travel disruption has been to them.”
A proposed service, operated by DFDS, which would have run on Friday evenings and return late on Monday afternoon was spiked because it would have arrived after Guernsey’s port closed.
