Ferry bookings are on rise after Covid setbacks
CROSS-CHANNEL operator Brittany Ferries has seen bookings recover following two years of Covid-19 disruption, but it is still wrestling with a Brexit hangover and a €120 million loan repayment.
The French-owned company, which has its UK base at Millbay, said bookings are good, particularly on longer routes such as from Plymouth to Spain, but the number of French visitors to Britain has fallen since Brexit and the company has had to cut costs to deal with Covidrelated losses including a €120 million loan.
It is tackling this by increasing efficiency and cutting jobs via natural wastage, and is insisting it will not follow rival P&O Ferries and go for a low-cost model which sees seafarers replaced with cheap agency staff.
Christophe Mathieu, chief executive of Brittany Ferries, said he was “not unsatisfied” with booking numbers for summer 2022, and said they were particularly good on longer routes such as from Ireland to France and Spain and the UK to Spain, but he revealed there had been a postBrexit slump in the numbers of French visitors to the UK.
“Bookings are good, better on the long routes but not quite so good on the UK channel routes,” he said. “In volume, we are suffering a big drop in French customers. We have lost almost all French school groups. There is a significant reduction in the number of French people looking to visit Britain this summer, that’s to do with Brexit.
“The UK to France route is not as good but only because of a lack of French customers, and there is still a concern that France is not as popular as Spain for British people. But I’m not unsatisfied with the bookings, they are good after two years of inactivity.”
Brittany Ferries has now brought every ship back into service and reopened all its routes after two years of Covid disruption. It has increased sailings from Plymouth to Spain and Ireland to France.
Pont-Aven is now serving two weekly rotations to Santander, previously it was one, as well as a weekly round-trip to Roscoff in France, and now only sails from Plymouth, and not from Portsmouth. Armorique has also returned to daily rotations linking Plymouth with Roscoff, the company’s Breton home.
Meanwhile, Brittany Ferries is looking at how it can maintain high standards but also cut costs in order to pay off debts incurred during the pandemic, when revenue sank by €267 million.
Mr Mathieu, who was in Plymouth to talk with the city council and Associated British Ports about the future of the Millbay ferry port, said Brittany Ferries had borrowed in the region of €180 million to get through the coronavirus crisis. He said the French government had given the firm a grant of €60 million, but this still left €120 million to pay back and belt tightening was now necessary.
“We have seven or eight years to do it but it is a burden on top of reinvesting in our fleet, but we can live with that. We know what we have to do, so that is fine,” he said.
Mr Mathieu has already criticised rival P&O Ferries for sacking 800 workers and replacing them with cheaper agency staff. He said Brittany Ferries would not follow suit due to such an action being against its moral principles. The firm was founded in 1973 by French farmers with a brief to boost the economy of Brittany and create jobs.
However, Brittany Ferries still needs to make a profit, and Mr Mathieu said that meant some action had to be taken. The firm has done this through not replacing staff that leave and working more efficiently on its ships. “We are not a low-cost model, but not a socialist company either and have asked crew to work in a different manner to increase efficiency,” he said.