Bermuda’s decades of decline in tourism numbers coupled with an overview of the difficulties the industry has still to overcome are detailed in a Travel Weekly report, published in its most recent issue.

Travel Weekly describes itself as “the travel industry’s trusted voice”, with a digital and print circulation of 37,000, almost all within the United States, and about half of whom are travel agents.

Writer Johanna Jainchill opened the article with a description of the reaction that followed a promotional visit to New York five months ago by several government politicians, including Premier Michael Dunkley.

The article, which heads the Caribbean Travel section of the publication and published in this week’s issue, is called “Bermuda back on track” and opens with the public relations furore that followed the New York visit. “Last September, Bermuda’s Premier, along with two ministers and a senator, spent several days in New York meeting with reporters and business interests, and attending the launch of a perfume from the Lili Bermuda perfume company, where they posed for photos with actress Catherine Zeta-Jones,” it said.

“The trip set off such a fervour at home that days later, the Government put up a website detailing the costs of all official travel and fired back in defence of the trip’s purpose.”

The article stated that Bermudians “ ... might disagree about whether the national cocktail is the rum swizzle or the dark and stormy, but one thing locals seem to agree upon is that in terms of tourism, Bermuda has lost its way,” blaming “an increasingly blurred focus,” and citing a lack of “any effort to sustain and promote the industry over the last 20 years.”

Bermuda, says Ms Jainchill: “ ... confront(ed) its tourism problem in earnest in 2012,” with the creation of the Bermuda Tourism Authority (BTA), which she explained put tourism marketing into the private sector. Quoting Victoria Isley, BTA’s chief sales and marketing officer, the article reads: “Tourism was going down here, [while] in rest of the world it was going up.”

In addition, Bermuda has long been relatively closed to foreign investment, even as Caribbean destinations were welcoming it.

“The trifecta of marketing complacency, a difficult investment environment and the rise of so many other island destinations created a Bermuda Triangle of problems for the tourism industry,” it continued.

Ms Jainchill said that among the BTA’s initiatives are to persuade more tourists to visit Bermuda year-round.

She called that “a challenge” because “compared with Caribbean destinations, Bermuda is not all that warm in the winter.

“But as [Bill] Hanbury [BTA chief executive officer] pointed out, not every tourist wants to go to the beach. Golf enthusiasts, for example, would be very happy to play a round in 70F weather in January.”

She added: “The BTA is also heavily promoting Bermuda’s proximity to the East Coast of the US and that it’s a mere 90-minute flight from New York, Boston or Washington. “That’s a great advantage [compared with] a Caribbean island,” Isley said.

“We’re in the Atlantic. ... a New Yorker who wakes up in freezing cold in the morning can have a dark and stormy in hand on the golf course in the afternoon.” Bermuda’s new branding, promoting the Island’s British, Caribbean and African roots: “ ... an alchemy celebrated in its new ‘Proper Fun’ campaign,” is highlighted in the article, along with the legalisation of gambling.

The need to attract more air arrivals, while sustaining cruise passenger numbers, is a priority for Bermuda, she said, and the America’s Cup and new hotel construction projects were also points of focus.

The BTA declined to comment on the article.

• Read the article at goo.gl/Cwrk45