Island Echo always welcomes letters to the editor, which may of course not reflect the views of the publication and its staff.
Letter to the editor – 10th March 2023
“Dear Keith Greenfield,
“We have met; on Ryde Pier during my campaign to try to stop the Isle of Wight Council developing our historic seafront into a new motorway (consequently a bitter failure to have to observe daily).
Article continues below this advertisement “I write now to express my horror at your prices for peak times visitor ferry travel, and the subsequent impact on my small business.
“At half term we had karting cancellations because our regular visitors to the Island did not expect the huge increase when they went to book their ferry. I had to refund.
“My personal friends making the IW Festival trip have paid £350 for Thurs to Mon. I was SO embarrassed- they paid £170 last year and this was mortifying.
“You may reply that I can have ‘special’ arrangements and prices for my customers, which if booked in advance will save them money. I don’t want to be your travel agent though: Its hard enough running a small go-kart track.
“Last minute bookings are critical to my business and these would not be available on previous experience- whether or not I had a special arrangement & you had capacity.
Article continues below this advertisement “In the short term you may have made more profit but think on…customers that have taken the ferry at these high prices are harder to please. Their expectations are significantly raised.
“My staff do a brilliant job and we have a genuine 4.8 Google review record- but your prices will have an impact on this, and on other tourist businesses and the Island economy in the medium term.
“I implore you to retract that strategy, you are/will kill businesses here.”
Cathy Foulkes
Director of Wight Karting
perhaps your customers should use the fastcat and bus, instead of driving here, adding to queues and pollution
How will that improve custom for inaccessible/rural businesses and encourage visitors?
Come to the Isle of Wight – the land that time (and money) forgot.
better public transport connectivity
Ew, public transport is for poor people
People like you will soon complain when there are no restaurants, pubs, shops or entertainment to be had anywhere on the island. Without tourism every business suffers. Period.
Been coming to the IOW since I was 6 years old that was 1952 all my children used to come over but now find ferry to expensive and rather have that bit of extra to spend on the main land such a shame as we loved coming over now that’s 5 cars twice a year not coming for there holiday so many people saying the same thing I now will visit every other year.
I used to live on the island, and I can confirm the bus routes only take you to dead towns now anyway. If you want the island to succeed as a tourist attraction – which lets face it, it is, then people need to bring there cars down. I myself have to bring my car down to visit my parents this week as there are no bus routes to where they live, at the ridiculous price of £70 for a day return!
What a stupid comment
Very well said. They’re putting their own profits before any sense of respect or loyalty to islanders.
It’s a business non of the ferry companies have any loyalty to Islanders yet ironically the same ferry companies depend on the Island being an attractive vacation area for their profits. Financially it does make you wonder if we would be better off running an Island Owned independent ferry service which could cater for passengers and vehicles. The biggest profit for ferry companies are the massive fees they charge suppliers of freight goods.
How can you complain? Your prices are out of reach for many familys on the island
I don’t usually react to keyboard warriors but here goes:
Our prices for local, regular drivers are from £14 per race; £2.33 of which goes to the VAT man.
So we have £11.69 to:
buy a go kart for that racer- £7,200,
fuel- £1.70/L,
pay 4 or 5 LOCAL PEOPLE, our staff -£6.50-10.80/hr,
heat a building,
clean the toilets and pay for water in them.
How much would you guess we make? When we do profit, 19% is paid in Corporation tax.
When you would like to support local business by joining us, Id be happy to take your card (-:
stop crying – your accounts at companies house paint a picture of £200k cash in hand, as well as recently repaid, interest free loans to you and one other of £43k each – you aint struggling yet.
as for corporation tax- that is only paid after your salaries and every other cost you can deduct.
Wightlink are doing exactly the same as you, making as much money as possible from their assets – why, because like you, they are a “for profit” company.
Another corporate berating another corporates pricing strategy, Ace,
I’m certainly not a keyboard warrior, and nowhere on your website is there a £14 ride on a go kart, I have 2 teenage boys, and they would love to do an activity like this, and I’m sure alot of parents would agree your prices are to much, your complaining about the ferry’s, they also have staff to pay and tax, it’s cheaper to travel on the ferry for 1 minute, than it is to ride your go karts for 1 minute
Yes there is Jop, my family use it the whole time. You need to look a bit harder
Good for you, that you have £50 per child to outlay at one time, it’s a joke, you cannot go and have a ride on a go kart for £14 just as a on off, FACT
At least you will get a seat at wight karting unlike the ferry
I would have to outlay £100 for 2 children, not just a one off ride for £14, so it’s quite surprising that your MORTIFIED about your none islander friends spending money on the ferry, I’m MORTIFIED about having to spend £50 per child for what you are offering
A service effectively endorsed by Bob Seely.
Effortless Bob rides again.
Variable pricing combined with an inept council have allowed both ferry companies to excessively profiteer from tourists and islanders alike
Your headline makes it sound as if Wightlink are admitting they’re killing business.
Cathy isn’t “admitting” this will kill business – she’s stating a fact as she sees it.
Excellent letter Cathy.
What do you expect from the Island’s own version of The Sun?
says smiffy the daily sun reader lol
Not a fact an opinion
The problem is we have two very greedy ferry services that are only interested in making inflated profits for their shareholders and care nothing for providing a service for the population of the Island.
It’s terrible what the ferry companies charge at peek times and deters so many people from visiting this beautiful island,I for one wouldn’t live anywhere else.
At the moment you have to travel at silly o’clock in the early hours and pay £35 or and I’ve had to do this several times and use one of thier vouchers at peek time for a same day return for £47.50 and not use the return part.
As this is so true, why does nobody else have anything to say ?
When will Wightlink realise the island survives on tourism! If they make the ferries so expensive they will lose in the end. Packed ferries at cheaper prices obviously makes more money in the long run and encourages more tourists.
FA to come here for anyway most of the island is run down, shabby buildings and empty shops !
I’m not so sure. IWCC seem intent on killing tourism, along with Southern water as well as the ferries. Council seem to be desperate to build or give planning permission to build on any green bit of beautiful countryside. If tourists wanted to see concrete, bricks and mortar, they wouldn’t need to leave the cities. As well as letting the beach towns turn in to ghost towns, with the aid of Southern water, who dump the islands raw sewage all over the beaches and in the sea, every time it rains, and when it doesn’t!
The islands sewers, roads, dentists, Drs cannot handle more housing without huge investment in those areas and more, especially with the only hospital, already suffering too many bedding crisis and joining with a mainland hospita
If only we were less car dependent as a tourist island and have more tourists come by foot ferries, which are way cheaper to run and at the same time easier to initiate competition.
But nah, I think we should still downvote any ideas of putting more bus lanes, double yellow lines, pedestrianising streets or building cycling infrastructure – as an island that can be cycled from north to south in 30 minutes and who had great railway links in the past there’s just nothing we can do about it I’m afraid, better build more parking spaces 😉
I’m seriously surprised anybody is surprised that they get for what most people vote: dependency of yourself and customers on heavy vehicles which are expensive to transport.
Woke leftist! The cars are our saviour! I’m staying plugged in, nothing you can say will wake me.
Lets say average Joe weighs 100kg and pays £20 for transporting himself as a foot passenger.
Lets be generous and assume no one drives an SUV and so our average car weight is going to be the bottom of the scale: about 2000kg.
if transporting 100kg costs £20 then naturally transporting 20x more should cost £400.
And with that driver of the car (and all passengers) doesn’t even have to pay for their own weight, just the car!
Sounds… sensible?
Silly…. what about a small motorbike.. weighs about a tenth of a car, but costs over half ??? Not that many years ago motorcycle return was £18.00, and I think at that time cars return was about £35.
It does, and if they rely on customers from the North Isle to keep business afloat then tgere are two issues; wrong location and islanders’ cash – some not in employment, sone in part time/seasonal employment that pays peanuts. Unless they can offer a season £40 come-as-often-as-you-like till you’re sick of the place (Robin Hill, Blackgang Chine), bring own picnic and make it a loads of cheap family days out, they’ll be heading under.
You want to stop subsidising car drivers?!? Authoritarian leftist! Your no better than hitler!
IOW crossing must be the most expensive (per mile) sea journey in the world. Lymington to Yarmouth is 4 miles. I paid £160 for ONE WAY crossing last summer when a close family member died. Truly obscene pricing
So sorry to hear that the go karts have been losing business..was also sorry for myself when they refused to honour the voucher I had bought for my grandson as a Christmas present . He was unable to use it because of lockdown. Apparently wight karting generously offered just one day for people to use their vouchers but unfortunately I didn’t get the email so I lost my £20. Karma?
You could sue for the loss of voucher claiming ‘frustrated contract’. You would win, as did the woman who sued BA who refused to refund a travel voucher. That case was won citing ‘frustrated contract’.
Why would Keith Greenfield change Wightlink’s pricing strategy? They have been making substantial profits for years and are obviously good at it. Are you suggesting they’re suddenly not so good at it?
She’s suggesting profit for them isn’t good for us. Communist…
You are so right. But sadly we have a monopoly here on the island with two private ferry companies who are never more than a couple of pound apart. What we need is government subso
A TUNNEL, not a ferry..
No there should not be a subsidy. It’s a choice to live on an island, benefit from cheaper property prices, why should the rest of the country foot the bill for that.
Monopoly is one duopoly is two. Two ferry companies therefore a duopoly so get your facts right
The Island economy is slowly dying due in part to the travel costs. It’s a downward spiral, sadly. I feel sorry for small business owners. There’s no support from local or central government that REALLY makes a difference to ferry charges.
To be honest the less tourists the better, they.come over here, snarl up the roads, pollute the sky, pressurise our emergency services through their own stupidity and for what? Lining the coffers of the ferry companies, multinational burger chains and national supermarkets. take your trade elsewhere…i hear Burley is a lovely place, pitch your tent there!
Yes good, hope the prices rise more and more, So with luck Away Resorts in Hillway Road, Bembridge will close as they have no customers. They have spoiled Whitecliff Bay and Hillway Road. It has turned into a housing estate and gipsy encampment with all the noise to go with it.
Aren’t you a Ray of sunshine… Some real islanders with young families wish their children to have some kind of employment not just caring for elderly retirees who think the Island should stay in the 1900’s…it isn’t a floating retirement home for the elderly who decide the North Isle is not for them any more, we should do what Jersey and Isle of Man do unless you have worked here for a decent amount of time or were born here, no chance if retiring here…. That would keep some of the moaners and whingers away!…. You need life on an Island not more fossils
The sad thing is it actually is becoming a vast retirement complex.
We can’t do what jersey and the Isle of Man do as they are independent states and make their own laws while the Isle of Wight is just classed as another English county and has no more power to control who moves here than Devon and Cornwall (who have similar problems) do.
One huge problem is the way housing developers build for these incoming retirees and advertise nationally “retire to the Isle of Wight”.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s depressing having a place that the old move to and young move off. A fixed link really is the only way forward. We can have a cap on the amount of ‘mainlander’s’ that come over before everyone gets in a flap.
Total and utter garbage! Never going to be a tunnel or a bridge. The retired mainlanders are paying out to keep backward islanders living in luxury. You’d all be in mud huts otherwise. Maybe we should cap further breeding by “indigenous islanders” instead and just allow them to produce enough spawn to run the dodgems and serve chips.
And when the prisoners come out of prison send them off the Island as well, as there are a disproportionate amount of sex offenders as well.
It is quite obvious the ferry companies do not care about the cost or the people…or that it is killing the Island. Hopefully more companies will complain and get it to the Government, we need a TUNNEL….
But you will never get a tunnel (unless you are going to dig it yourself) because it is not financially viable.
Time for fixed link?
Never never never going to happen, never!
You are not a tree. Move. Difficult, but not impossible.
One of the 7 deadly sins GREED, and Wightlink have that in bucket load. Its a shame our wonderful MP. ha ha. Doesn’t do something about. Lots of words, no action.
I Agree,our LOCAL MP(who doesn’t care about the I.O.W( Where Does He live! Oh yeh on the mainland
It’s an easy blue seat here. Guaranteed. So boy blue Bob knew he could get the job.
Wightlink thinks the island move with the Tide thats why it charges a different price instead of having a set price of £35 each way i pay one price for going over & a different price for return yet the island hasn’t moved further afield
Absolutely only regular actions carry on by Islanders who will be not use ferries at particular days , limited only to necessary sailing.Such coordinated “strikes” give a reflection to these greedy…
Islanders: you will be moaning about the ferry companies until the day you die. Nothing will change – people will always have to limit the amount of times they go to the mainland to see family or have a fun day out because they can’t afford to do it. Your children will leave and you won’t see them as often as you would like because of the ferry companies. We live in a place where the old move to and the young move off and it is not sustainable. We need a fixed link and that is the only way forward. The ferry times, inconvenience and the horrendous prices are here to stay. Time for a change.
Just don’t take your car and it is reasonable enough. Catch a train or bus on the other side. Simple.
No it is not that simple I am afraid. A family of four would pay at least £70 to go across on the hovercraft, not including the cost of a train or bus. It may be reasonable to yourself, but we have to think of everyone. Also buses and trains do not go everywhere. You would be looking at over £100 just to go for a day out and that’s without buying or paying to get in anywhere. Also, what if you wish to bring heavy items back with you – you might see something on the off chance and wish you had taken the car. No it’s a huge issue. I could go into more depth.
Have you ever taken a train? It’s a HUGE frustration every time. They don’t work. Cancelled, delayed, cancelled, “sorry, this train is now terminating at Barnham”… cancelled. Cancelled. Just open the Trainline app and you will see that you can’t get anywhere.
People don’t like to admit it, but a bridge is now the only answer.
Face facts otherwise the Island will suffer.
The island desperately needs a tunnel. Historically 2-3 have already been attempted (search youtube, there is a great documentary on it). How long are we going to be held hostage by two companies for access to our island?
Certainly agree. Looking to come over next week, but £100+ return is unjustifiable.
I am heartened that the prices for such a short ferry trip have been raised.
I am a former resident of the island and have continued to visit for last 30+ years and have always been baffled that the prices can be justified
Put a tunnel in and most of the problems will disappear.
I’m lucky as I travel late night on the cheapest ferry and I can access my caravan all hours.
The day price for vehicles is astronomical and they should restructure the system.
As one of those visitors/tourists whose attitude on travel costs are being speculated about here, let me add my two-penneth worth. I’m a regular visitor to the Isle of Wight from the mainland as I have family living there. My train ticket from Guildford to Shanklin costs me £38.40 return, which INCLUDES the ferry crossing. When I arrive I buy a “7 Day Freedom” bus ticket from Southern Vectis for £28.00. So my entire transport costs for a one week visit are £66.40, including unlimited travel on local buses. I spend several days exploring the island by bus, cycling and walking. I can get almost anywhere on the island I want to go like that. I spend money at local businesses while I’m there and thoroughly enjoy myself. No complaints from me.
The price of ferries to the Isle of Wight for such a short journey are ridiculous! I was in shock for what is such a short crossing.
I would not travel there without discount provided by the holiday company I have booked through.
It makes journeys to France on Brittany Ferries seem great value in comparison to the distance!
It shouldn’t cost more than £100 a car to go to the Isle of Wight return, that way, more tourists will be inclined to visit and keep the ferries full.
I need to travel across to the mainland next Wednesday in my van, nothing special just a Ford transit Custom. Day return wightlink quoted at £236, justify that!
I lived on the island for 20 years so seen the decline. I had a business and because the island is so poor to make a living is long hours for little money. The cost of public transport rules out making it economical. The cost of the ferrys have a massive impact on everyone on the island. I still have friends and family i dont see know due to the cost of a vist so my money goes elsewhere. My business survived on the summer trade with overners spending more in five weeks than the islanders spent in the other 47. So it kept me off benefits and able to pay tax. Providing a service needs to be sustained and that can only be done by money coming on to the island. The scooter rally has halved due ro ferry costs. All that revenue gone.