Damage to tourism will take years to repair

Tourists’ experiences of a vacation in Bermuda have changed lately — and not necessarily for the better. All the hype about cruise ship arrival numbers, future hotels and the perpetually over-the-horizon “platinum period” only reminds us of how it used to be.

The following issues have arisen:

Cordiality. Bermuda’s stellar tourism history was largely driven by the cordiality of the local population.

We did not have to be trained to be hospitable. Bermudians had a natural friendliness and politeness that stood out among tourism destinations.

These days, far too many people who speak for Government are hateful in their manner of speech, either in the content or the delivery.

The issues surrounding race are not being healed but rather inflamed.

Xenophobia is being needled into anti-tourism as comments and attitudes toward foreigners are being directed at visitors.

Feelings of hatred are difficult to turn off once they are turned on and the short-sighted outbursts by political leaders aimed at the island’s whites and segments of the foreign workforce are being repeated to our tourists and turning them off.

Transport Minister Dr. Ewart Brown’s treatment of taxi drivers is another nail in tourism’s coffin.

Generations of taxi drivers have been front-line ambassadors for Bermuda.

Their friendliness, generosity of spirit and all-round knowledge of the island meant almost every tourist who got into a local taxi was assured of special treatment.

Over the past several years, taxi drivers have been irritated by derogatory comments, frustrated and financially challenged by the mandatory GPS policy, prejudiced against by unfair competition from limousines, trolleys and even Government’s own buses and mini-buses and have now had their dispatching company shut down. All this from their own Transport Minister. If these frustrations show up on the job — and I have no doubt they do — then another thing that made Bermuda special for tourists has been run into the ground.

Traffic. The same Transport Minister has converted Bermuda’s roads from being merely congested to being lethal.

Early in his Transport Minister days, Dr. Brown opened Bermuda’s roads to larger and more powerful cars, larger and more powerful motorbikes and oversized trucks.

These policies, exacerbated by lax enforcement of traffic laws, has led to nightmarish traffic conditions.

Even for Bermudians who have coped with our narrow and congested roads all our lives, the traffic has become intolerable, leading to short fuses, aggressive behaviour, higher speeds, more serious accidents and deaths.

For tourists expecting an idyllic tropical island experience, Bermuda’s traffic and road behaviour are disappointing and threatening.

Environmental crowding and commercialization. Moves to commercialise Bermuda’s beaches have often cheapened the product more than enhanced it.

Flooding the beaches with cruise ship tourists, as is done at Horseshoe Bay, does little to differentiate the Bermuda experience and much to brand us as just another tourist trap.

Advertising. As for the administration and promotion of tourism, the closing of the New York tourism office and the opening and operation of tourism offices in Washington DC and London are still shrouded in mystery and of questionable advantage.

Add to that the questionable worth of $28 million in no-bid contracts to advertising agent GlobalHue and promotional jaunts to China and India, few of whose residents can vacation at our prices, and it is no wonder fewer tourists are coming.

Looking over Bermuda’s tourism history for the past 60 years it is hard to find an era in which so much was done to damage the product, irritate the ambassadors, queer the promotion and dull the experience.

While Dr. Brown’s sycophants don’t like it, the Premier is directly responsible for appointing himself as Tourism Minister and Transport Minister and the dismal state of tourism lies at his feet, literally.

Unfortunately, the damage being done to Bermuda’s product, image and experience will take years if not decades to repair.  

And, no matter who forms the next administration, we are the ones who have to live with it.