More tourists needed

[sir nige]

21 minutes ago, CharlieBrown said:

A few beers always do.

[Frances]

Derek
The Scottish Islands have natural harbours that are deep enough to take cruise ships as well as a significant number of other large boats using them to help cover the costs. Ports on the Island are little better than tidal and cannot take larger vessels requiring greater draught without significant investment.

Whether they make much money from such tourists I'm not so sure as most meals are taken on board with the lunch time meal + coffee/teas at local museum cafes being typical of the coach parties I saw over a few years of holidaying the islands - tho the port towns I admit were busier and considerably more pleasant to visit than the hole that is Douglas, but when we went out for evening meals we must have avoided the places catering for all the 'rich' cruise ship passengers

[WTF]

its always more of other people and never less civil servants.

[On The Bus]

3 hours ago, b4mbi said:

340,000 p.a. ?

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/visit-isle-of-man-announces-three-year-plan/

Given we currently get 40,000 for TT, 15,000 from cruise, and say 10,000 for fom, this just seems like a wildly over optimistic target to me.

Can't see our current levels of tourism being much over 100,000 total per annum, but I've not researched..

Another job justification scheme from dfe me thinks...

 

Government all over though. In 3 years time there won't be any review of this, there will be nobody held to account for these predictions, it's just the usual airy fairy BS spin that we have now all become so used to. 

[Non-Believer]

8 hours ago, On The Bus said:

Government all over though. In 3 years time there won't be any review of this, there will be nobody held to account for these predictions, it's just the usual airy fairy BS spin that we have now all become so used to. 

Speaking of airy fairy - how's the fairy houses doing, are they still bringing in 50,000 a year all by themselves?

[Donald Trumps]

Climate change response requires a new green approach & a sustainable visitor industry

[monasqueen]

In 3 years time, they might just have finished working on the Prom, so tourists might start coming back then.

[NoTail]

The prom as it is could be sold as a tourist attraction. 

There are bound to be enthusiasts for scenes of devastation etc

[yootalkin2me]

14 hours ago, Derek Flint said:

Some of the Scottish Isles do really well. It’s wholly achievable and I think the likes of Corona may well help.

subsidies for travel would be money well spent.

I don't think piss weak lager will help, they already have that nailed in Majorca.

[b4mbi]

2 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

Speaking of airy fairy - how's the fairy houses doing, are they still bringing in 50,000 a year all by themselves?

it's a tragic story really.

The 50,000 fairies at the Fairy Bridge on the A5 were dislocated a few years ago, as all of the trees were cut down and the tat they depended on for their survival was unceremoniously removed (Did the police ever solve that case?)

This prompted them to move back to their ancient home, "The Real Fairy Bridge" , but a war on meaningless plastic tat was declared due to a climate emergency, and this was all removed from the RFB.

Thank goodness for the DfE, who stepped up to the plate and commissioned 4 brand new fairy houses for £26,000, allowing all of the 50,000 now displaced, homeless fairies once again to be safe and secure in  lovely new, affordable, energy efficient housing at a mere cost to the taxpayer of 52p per fairy.

But it came to pass that the DfE hadn't put an 'elf, safety and maintenance program into place, claiming it was not their responsibility. A spokesperson said "Clearly, we are the idea's people, and we are great at spunking loads of money on hairbrained schemes to attract tourists. Don't expect us to take responsibility if our ideas are a load of old shite and don't attract the tourists we guaranteed they would in our highly questionable business cases.  It's not our fault the Island doesn't have a unique selling point that has the potential to attract mass tourism just like in the good old days. Blame MNH and DoI and the taxpayer."

The new houses rather predictably fell into a state of disrepair being exposed to the Manx weather, seemingly no-one having the foresight and wisdom that actually it gets quite wet and windy on Bradda Head.

Today, alas, there are 50,000 fairies in need of new homes, so sadly, your expectations that the fairy houses can bring in a further 50,000 are misplaced.

Oh, the official number of actual tourists they attracted is 7 (if you count the "I can't believe they're paying me £26k for these" creator from Sweden, her husband, her two kids and their dog)

 

[Non-Believer]

I see Mr Skelly is now claiming that we're part of the UK's "Northern Powerhouse" as well now.

There must be 50,000 fairies in his skull alone.

[TheTeapot]

A quarter of the population of Wigan, Skelly is off his nut. 

[Roger Mexico]

The DfE have now done what you would have expected them to do yesterday, which is issue the press release (warning contains Rob Callister) and more importantly the Visit Isle of Man Strategic Plan to 2023.  It is, even by the standards of the DfE, an extraordinarily content-free document.  Every statement is aspirational - what they would like to happen rather than anything to say how they could make it happen.  As with many 'strategic plans' there's hardly any strategy and absolutely no planning.  Just a relentless trickle of management-speak and bullshit from page to page (naturally there are lots of pretty pictures and big headings to take up most of the space). 

About the only actual figure they give in the whole mess is the 340,000 target for 'visitors' by 2023.  Obviously this sounds ridiculous until you realise the special way that that the DfE counts visitors.  This isn't defined anywhere (nothing as vulgar as facts can be allowed in this 'Plan') but there's a hint later when it mentions "we have a base of over 300,000 current visitors".  

I suspect you are feeling surprised but this is derived from the Annual Passenger Survey which says:

Quote

During 2018, there were 145,738 passengers staying in paid accommodation on the Island, 98,910 staying with friends or family, 59,565 business visitors and 4,051 day trippers.

which gives a total of 308,264[1].  So their definition includes all sorts of people who no one would normally think of as visitors.  Effectively they are taking credit for anyone coming to the Island for any reason whatsoever.  Less than half of their definition are what you might think of as tourists and even some in the 145,738 will be people coming over for non-tourist reason (they might be visiting relatives but not staying with them for instance, as the passenger survey points out).

 

[1]  These are the 2018 figures, the 2019 ones won't be out will April or so.  It does not include "unscheduled departures such as some charter flights, cruise ship passengers and pleasure craft".

[Derek Flint]

50 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

I see Mr Skelly is now claiming that we're part of the UK's "Northern Powerhouse" as well now.

There must be 50,000 fairies in his skull alone.

So we are part of the UK now? 

I do wish they would make their minds up

[manxman34]

14 hours ago, Frances said:

Derek
The Scottish Islands have natural harbours that are deep enough to take cruise ships as well as a significant number of other large boats using them to help cover the costs. Ports on the Island are little better than tidal and cannot take larger vessels requiring greater draught without significant investment.

Whether they make much money from such tourists I'm not so sure as most meals are taken on board with the lunch time meal + coffee/teas at local museum cafes being typical of the coach parties I saw over a few years of holidaying the islands - tho the port towns I admit were busier and considerably more pleasant to visit than the hole that is Douglas, but when we went out for evening meals we must have avoided the places catering for all the 'rich' cruise ship passengers

Is that why IoMSPC boats are smaller than other Irish Sea ferries? What would it take to upgrade the facilities to take a bigger ferry rather than this cruise ship nonsense?