I’m sat waiting for my flight back to Jersey from Southampton Airport having just spent the past four days in the Isle of Wight at Bestival -an annual music festival famous around the world that has been held at the Robin Hill country park for the past decade.
I have been inspired to write now rather than wait until after I’ve had a hot bath and scrubbed the mud from under my nails because more than once today it has occurred to me just how much Jersey could learn from the Isle of Wight experience.
The island off the coast of Hampshire may be much larger than our own and just a short 20 minute ferry crossing from the mainland, but its population isn’t much bigger than our own and it has an economy traditionally based primarily on tourism and agriculture.
It, like Jersey, has a governor, is home to a flourishing population of red squirrels because, like Jersey, there are no grey ones threatening them, and, like Jersey, the Isle of Wight has a large section dedicated an area of outstanding natural beauty.
But, despite our similarities, the Isle of Wight is proving much more successful at the whole tourism thing than we are.
And, it seems that the best way of explaining why is that while they have modernised their approach to attracting visitors to their shores, we haven’t. And, unlike Jersey, they aren’t snobbish about the kind of tourists they want to attract.
You see, walking holidays and those based on the natural beauty that both islands have in spades are all well and good.
But, they are no quick fix to the ongoing challenges of marketing British holidays at a time when most still consider a proper holiday one that involves changing currency, learning how to order a beer in another language and working out which side of the road to drive on.
Instead, the Isle of Wight has embraced the festival as a way to boost its economy, and done so extremely well.
Take Bestival, which in ten years has grown in such popularity that this year more than 60,000 people flocked to the Isle of Wight, most of them from off island, to see the likes of Snoop Dogg, Elton John, Rudimental and Franz Ferdinand perform.
Sure, many things had to be brought in from the mainland to run the festival, but local companies had food stalls, local charities were on site, local suppliers were used, and many local people worked on the project.
Local taxis, coaches and ferries were all inundated with jobs and had an endless queue of people using them on both arrival and departure days, and local shops had stocked up especially on things that most festival goers need such as cider, wet wipes and suncream.
But this kind of thing doesn’t just happen once a year in the Isle of Wight. Bestival is just one of many such events that take place on the island annually and bring in much needed visitors. There is also the Isle of Wight music festival which is recognised around the world for its line-up mixing legendary artists with up and coming talent, the Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally that is one of the biggest gatherings of scooters in the world, Cowes Week, which is the largest sailing regatta in the world, the family-friendly Rhythmtree World Music Festival, V-Dub Island where VW owners and enthusiasts from around the world converge on the island, the Isle of Wight Cycling Festival, and so the list goes on. There is even a festival dedicated to one of the island’s most successful crops – garlic.
However, before you start reeling off a list of all the things we have going on in Jersey and propose we introduce a Jersey Royal Potato Festival, it is how these events are promoted that really set the Isle of Wight apart from us.
They are all aimed at attracting tourists to the island, not just giving the locals something to keep themselves entertained.
They are marketed around the country, every travel operator serving the Isle of Wight has them plastered all over their websites and run special deals to get people to the island for the various events, and the national media are all on board, covering the events for newspapers, television programmes and websites each and every year.
Jersey Live co-organiser Warren Le Sueur recently told the JEP that he would like Tourism to get more involved with the festival – which, like Bestival also celebrated its tenth anniversary this year, and help to promote it overseas. He also urged local businesses to get in on the action and ‘fly the flag’ for the event.
Now, after my four days in the Isle of Wight, I completely get what he means. Aside from event sponsors JT, I saw just one local company do that for this year’s Jersey Live – a 20 per cent off promotion on wellies to mark a decade of the festival.
Until now I hadn’t really seen the appeal of camping for Jersey Live, which unfortunately didn’t happen this year because of a lack of interest. But, I now realise that I, as someone who lives just a 20-minute walk from the Trinity site, am not the target market, festival tourists are.
And, with a little bit of support from the right people, the right businesses and the right organisations it really could work next year.
Jersey may never rival the Isle of Wight for the title of festival island of the world, but we could all benefit from a little bit of modern thinking and a bit less snobbery when it comes to tourism.
And, if anyone fancies a fact-finding trip to the Isle of Wight, we have just under a year until Bestival 2014. I’ll start cleaning my wellies now.
