With the Isle of Wight set to be plunged back into lockdown from Thursday, Visit Isle of Wight have confirmed they will be supporting the national measures and encouraging people to ‘wait before visiting’.
Addressing the situation, Will Myles, Managing Director of Visit Isle of Wight, has said:
“The Prime Minister’s announcement will have a significant impact for the already under pressure tourism & hospitality sector and cross Solent transport operators on the Isle of Wight, but we fully understand the need for the Government to take these steps to bring this national and global health crisis under greater control and to protect the NHS.
Article continues below this advertisement “Visit Isle of Wight, with our partners, will work through the announcements over the coming days and will be here for the Island’s tourism & hospitality industry to get the relevant information out to everyone and to help.
“We can only praise the Island people, businesses and our visitors, who have worked together to fight this virus by following the correct measures put in place since the easing of the first lockdown in July.
“Visit Isle of Wight will be changing its current communications message to reflect the lockdown measures that have been announced, where once again we will be asking people to wait before visiting.
“Right now, this is a pause for the tourism industry and we hope that we will soon be able to welcome visitors back to the Island who help keep a large part of our community employed.
“We will be looking to the Government for announcements surrounding financial support packages to help our businesses once again.
Article continues below this advertisement “Together we can help in the fight against Coronavirus by staying home with our loved ones and avoiding all non-essential travel. The Island will wait”.
Good to hear: hope to see that change across all their social media channels. The island has been promoted by them so much recently leading to such an increase in staycations.
But how do we tackle those staycationers that flout the rules? The AirBnB in our street will no doubt still be letting visitors come and stay as they did during the last lockdown. I contacted the police via the web to let them know and mailed AirBnB direct, but of course, nothing happened – no response from either. If the police won’t uphold the law, people will continue to abuse the system and put others at risk.
Does anyone know where to report these holidaymakers breaking the law or will we have to take action into our own hands?
It would be better to ‘pull’ all ad’s, and not tell people to ‘wait’, for, as you realise, those selfish, uncaring, or just plain wanting a safer than ‘home’ place to go, will still come.
The ‘other’ two or three caring, thoughtful, nice potential visitors may well stay put and wait, but the ‘me, me, me’ uncaring masses will then still come.
Save the ad’s till it is safe, then advertise our beauty, before the Island Council ruin it all forever.
Intolerance alive and well on the Island.
Yet ‘tolerance’ has got the UK child g ang r apists, m uggers, st abbings daily, te rrorist b ombs, be hea ding, and the loss of being able to even SAY such, hence breaking up the words to avoid censorship.
So don’t knock intolerance.
Super glue in the key hole would be frowned upon by the authorities. So best to just avoid them.
As with most law breakers the modern approach, is to just moan, avoid, and yet pay ever more on our council tax and police precept, for an ever worsening service, as crims are untouchable.
Betty Boop, Air BnB is allowed to rent out to key workers and those coming from the mainland to work. These Air BnBs may be housing doctors who are saving our loved ones during this awful pandemic!
If they mean it then change the home page of the website, which still shows the map of how far it is to travel here. It’s no good just saying postpone, blah, blah, and also put checks of the ferries ALL of them.
Message doesn’t seem to have got through in Ventnor, Wheelers Bay chalets have holiday makers in them , just like they did during first lockdown.
Stop the caravans and second home owners.. Also stop people coming onto the island for tests which are still happening.. Five people came in a car recently were told to stay in their car on the boat. Next they are found in the cafe on the boat, they were sent back to the car cafe closed and deep cleaned and staff had to be tested, what a disgrace!!.
THANK GOD WE HAVE NO FIXED LINK.
There should have been NO coach holiday trips to the island since the first lockdown eased.
Not classed as essential but coaches allowed here with generally older passengers in the more vunerable and high risk age group. Absolutely foolhardy and unbelieveable and must not be repeated after this second lockdown. .
Nice of them to wait !!! Really … you haven’t got a choice matey!
Asking people to wait before visiting unfortunately won’t be enough to keep some people away. They will be breaking the lockdown rules if they travel and it isn’t essential, so they should incur a fine. We need to make sure we all stay safe throughout the winter months
Why would anyone want to come to the Isle of Wight in November? Get real.
As they don’t want anyone turning up, there is no need for visit isle of wight – so, they can shut up shop, all go on furlough and cut the bid levy to zero.
If you take note of where the most positive cases are located on the island, you will see that most on around the coast at popular tourist attractions. Last Saturday we saw 7 coach loads of visitors being dropped off at Morrisons, most of them were from Bradford or from ‘hot spots’ in Northern England. It’s no wonder cases on the island have increased, IOW Council have encouraged visitors to come to the island.
Visit the star attraction on the Isle of Wight – Morrisons !
will myles says…Visit Isle of Wight, with our partners, will work through the announcements over the coming days and will be here for the Island’s tourism & hospitality industry to get the relevant information out to everyone and to help.
reality – will myles will sit in his armchair at home, reading the announcement, just like everyone else. The only thing he will be working through, is the bid levy, money that he leeches off hard pressed businesses via his salary.
will myles will do a lot of armchair miles and a lot of talking – but nothing else, as the businesses are closed and owners will have made their own arrangements.
get rid of this useless parasitic outfit.