Jersey Island Statistics & Facts

In this guide

• Interesting facts about Jersey the island
• Why is tourism important to Jersey
• What’s happening in the UK market
• Economic factors to influence tourism

Interesting facts about Jersey the island

• The island of Jersey can be found just 19 miles off the coast of France, and 100 miles off the south coast of England.
• The island is just 5 miles long and 9 miles wide
• 100,000 people live on the island
• Its weather is much warmer than mainland UK
• They speak English with a faint Jersey accent.
• Road signs are in French.
• The island is a British Crown dependency with its own government.
• You can find 24 beaches across the island
• 3 castles – everyone loves to explore a castle!
• 150 restaurants and move opening every year
• 501 miles of walks

 

Why is tourism important to Jersey

Its not just Jersey, but all islands around the world will understand the importance of tourism and visitors coming into the island.  Tourists contribute towards the island in more ways than you might think… they create jobs, they spend money in the local economoy to support local businesses and they allow money to be invested into infrastructure.  Here are some the key highlights to the island of Jersey.

• Its estimated that tourism generates £12.5m of GST – that’s 15% of the overall islands GST.
• Over 60% of passengers passing through the airport and ferry port are visiting the island.
• 727,000 people visited Jersey in 2017:
  • 431,000 stayed overnight
  • 109,000 just came for the day
  • 103,000 were in the islands to visit friends or family.
  • 79,000 came on business – lets hope they come back for pleasure!
• Collectively they spent £250m on the island during their stay.
  • £135.9m on hotels and accommodation
  • £60.3m on food and drink
  • £17.6m on travel
  • £16.5m visiting local attractions
  • £15.9m when they went shopping
  • £2.4m on local tours and excursions.
  • £1.4m on other things (we aren’t quite sure what!)
• The main highlight for locals is that this created 6,470 jobs across the hospitality sector.
• 9% occupancy of hotel rooms – which means we still have plenty of space for new visitors!

 

What’s happening in the UK market

If you haven’t seen it we’d recommend reading the report issued from VisitEngland in May this year, it covers everything you need to know about the trends and insights into overnight domestic tourism.

Here’s a few highlights taken from that report:

• Average length of stay for overnight was 3.37 nights vs. 3.30 the year before.
• We’ve seen friends and family overnight stays increase 12% year-on-year.
• Overnight business trips were the biggest growth area with a huge annual growth of 21%.

 

Economic factors to influence tourism

Its important to have an understanding of the economic factors which can hugely influence travel trends across the UK.

Exchange Rates can impact those visitors from France and Germany.  Currently they are able to buy £1 for €1.09 meaning that Jersey offers great value and much more affordable  for many to visit.

Consumer Confidence can be impacted by major events in peoples countries, and will determine if people are willing to travel or spend their money.  For example after the French presidential election, we saw a huge consumer confidence across France.  There remains little sign of Brits becoming more positive due to Brexit and the government unable to reach a deal, interesting this is despite low level of unemployment.

Unemployment The French unemployment levels almost hit 10% recently which will have a negative effect on French people willing to travel or go on holiday.  UK rates continue to fall, from 4.9% to 4.3% in the past twelve months and is at its lowest since 1975.

Inflation  The rate of inflation has climbed to 2.9% recently, mainly due to the big decline in the sterling over the last few years, which is impacting through to the price paid by consumers for imported goods.