The figures, included within the organisation’s latest exit survey results, also reveal that collectively, tourists who visited within the three-month period spent a total of 272,000 nights in the Island – up 14% compared to the same time between 2017 and 2018. More than seven in ten visitors came from the UK.
However, the figures also revealed that there was a degree of weather-related travel disruption during the early part of 2018.
Keith Beecham, chief executive of Visit Jersey, said: ‘There are some very positive numbers, but I am always cautious about early-year figures.
‘January and February are up just under 10%, which is an important number to the Island but it is only a relatively small figure. And if we cast our minds back to 2018, we had quite a lot of disruption due to fog, strikes and poor weather, and in 2019 we have had quite clement weather, no significant disruption and our connections worked well and people took the opportunity to come to the Island.’
Mr Beecham added that the number of Guernsey visitors to Jersey had grown from 38,000 in 2017 to 55,000 in 2018 and that the Island had been experiencing 8% year-on-year growth from the French market, with 130,000 travelling from the country last year. ‘The connections have certainly been good, but if you cast your mind back to the full numbers for 2018, we had good growth on both France and Guernsey and this is a continuation of that trend,’ he said.
‘What we are seeing in the early months of this year is that trend continuing and that is to be applauded.
‘But, of course, our single biggest source of visitors is the UK, and just over 38,000 came in January and February, which represents very healthy growth on the previous year. These are all very encouraging signs but they all come with a health warning.’
Mr Beecham added that if the Island continued on its current trajectory of around 3% growth in visitor numbers each year, it could hit its target of one million annual visitors by 2030.
‘If we maintain that, we should be hitting our ambition by 2030, but it is never as black and white as that,’ he said.
‘To say we will continue to go up by 3% is very heroic, but it is not a straight line and we may go over that trend some years and we may go under during others.’
The statistics also showed that between December 2018 and February 2019, the average overnight stay lasted 3.6 nights – down from 4 the year before.
During the same three-month period, there was also a 50% increase in overnight stays compared to the previous year. The figures showed that 27% of visitors had travelled to the Island for the first time.
