Tourism suffers from lack of facilities it is claimed

Deputy Mike Torode said people in the industry were in denial about the decline.

He criticised the tourist board for painting an over-optimistic picture of the industry, and has described their figures as "pie in the sky".

He said: "Tourism in Guernsey is definitely in decline.

"Any intelligent observation will prove it.

"Bookings in the early part of this year were quite good, but have gone into a steep decline in the last few weeks, probably brought about by the war situation.

"But it does not take away from the fact that tourism has been in decline for a large number of years.

It's time to take a reality check Deputy Mike Torode

"We are not attracting sufficient numbers of people to Guernsey, and we don't really have the facilities for the when they get here."

He added: "We are an expensive place to come to - hotels, and transport are expensive and even eating out is no longer cheap.

"They must realise we are not the magnet we used to be and it's time to take a reality check."

Tourist Board president, Deputy Geoff Norman, said he was not prepared to respond to an "ill-informed outburst".

He said the Board was about to release figures demonstrating a much more positive outlook for tourism in the island.

Carl Symes, president of Guernsey's Hotel and Tourism Association, said: "I think Deputy Torode's comments are certainly unhelpful, and I think it's very easy to talk something up, or down.

"But I think we have got to realise that in the last few years our visitor numbers have been up and down a little bit - a couple of percentage points here and there, which in fact is a lot better than many of our competitors have done."