Director of marketing and tourism Chris Elliott delivers the good news at yesterday’s briefing. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0854432)

THE economic downturn is giving Guernsey’s holiday trade a boost, according to the director of marketing and tourism.

And Chris Elliott also believes that the island is doing better than Jersey in attracting visitors.

‘Hotel occupancy by August was 80% full,’ he said at an industry briefing yesterday. The rate was 70% in August last year.

‘We don’t know what the September figures will be but I’m hoping they will carry on.

‘We just had the best September in through the airport. We were 3.9% up on last September. Condor was reasonably pleased and had a good summer overall.’

Air travel in Europe, in contrast, was 7.9% down.

The number of brochures distributed in response enquiries rose from 59,642 in 2008 to 91,232 this year. The VisitGuernsey website also had 163,000 visitors, who looked at an average of eight pages each.

‘It was very, very pleasing,’ said Mr Elliott.

The downturn also meant that Tourism received £2.27m.-worth of advertising for just £56,000 as many major publications offered advertising at discounted rates.