“Jersey can have 1,000,000 tourists per year by 2030”

Mr Beecham is the man charged by the newly-formed Visit Jersey to buck a trend of declining tourism numbers and to metaphorically stick the ball in the back of the net by reaching that one million goal within 14 years.

In 2014, a total of 701,000 visitors came to Jersey, down seven percent on the 2005 figure. In the list of top 20 cities in Britain, published by the Daily Telegraph in 2013, Jersey came a healthy fifth – behind Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and London – but there is no denying it, the numbers coming to the Island are falling.

Mr Beecham’s comments come in an interview in Connect, the free monthly business magazine that’s being distributed around the Island now. You can read the interview in full here.

As well as a plan to improve numbers, there will also be a lot more digital advertising and in June Jersey gets a re-branding.

Mr Beecham said: “We are very excited because there is going to be a new brand for the island. We are working with a combination of a London-based agency and an island agency, so we are getting the best of both worlds, the international view plus the on-Island view.”

So what is the new Visit Jersey CEO’s approach to reversing that worrying statistic and get Jersey going in the right direction? As the song says, the only way is up, but how?  

“Very early on I wanted to understand what was really going on, so we consulted very widely,” said CEO Beecham. “In my first three months I spent 10 percent in the office and 90 percent running around the island and just listening. I was saying ‘What do we need to be doing to make a difference for tourism?’ That knowledge and wisdom was distilled into the Destination Plan that we now have for Jersey.

“Jersey does appeal to more active individuals who are actually looking to do a bit other than just sit on a beach. So it’s that active lifestyle that people want.

“I noticed that we were quite fragmented in how we saw travel and tourism. Three star hotels were competing with four and five star hotels. Restaurants were competing with each other. We really need to work together to bring people to Jersey.”