Visitors to Bermuda are spending less dollars than in any of the previous three years.

The plummeting revenue might have been excused last year as the Island rebuilt its vacation appeal following the damage of Hurricane Fabian in 2003.

But the second quarter figures for this year show only $112.3 million being spent by air visitors compared with a pre-Fabian figure of $124.4m in 2003.

Overall, there has been a gradual increase in the numbers of visitors arriving by air and sea since Fabian, but two years after the hurricane the Island is still not back to its 2002 position.

In a bid to arrest the slipping tourism dollars more effort is going to be made to attract trans-Atlantic visitors, particularly from Germany and Italy, who are more likely to stay for longer on the Island and therefore spend more helping bolster the tourism economy.

One of the reasons for the lower visitor-generated income this year is thought to be the trend for shorter stays on the Island by visitors, with many opting to stay only a few days rather than a full week or longer.

?I am concerned but not totally surprised,? said Wayne Smith, executive director of the Bermuda Alliance for Tourism.

?I?m more concerned about the state of the tourism industry in general and in terms of increasing visitor numbers and improving their experience on the Island.?

He added: ?We are seeing a shortening of stay by visitors, they are spending less time on the Island, many only for three days and we would like to see them stay for five or seven nights. We are working towards that. We are looking at Europe, in particular Germany and Italy, and targeting that market.?

Mr. Smith said European visitors are more likely to book for an extended stay because of the longer travelling time to reach the Island.

The amount spent by both air and cruise ship visitors is $134.1m ? marginally lower than the same period in 2002 and just over $10m lower than pre-Fabian 2003.

Comparing the second quarter figures for the past four years, cruise ship visitors are now spending more than in any of the previous three years with $21.8m being added to the Island?s economy this year.

That piece of good news is tempered by the lower spending from air visitors, as reported in the latest Government statistics.

After a bad run of six consecutive falls in the number of air passengers visiting Bermuda the trend is now back up, having turned around in the third quarter of 2004.

In the second quarter of this year there were 92,115 stay-over visitors with the majority, some 78 percent, arriving from the US.

The number of air visitors from Canada has increased by 12.3 percent year-on-year and from the UK there has been a rise of 7.8 percent over the same period.

Visitors flying to the Island are spending more on accommodation and food than last year, to the tune of $65.9m which shows a near 60 percent jump, but this is counterbalanced by less cash being spent on shopping, entertainment, transport and sight-seeing with a roughly 15 percent fall compared with 2004.

Picking up on the bright news about cruise ship visitors, the Government report notes: ?The latest boom in the volume of cruise ship passengers is attributed largely to an expanded line of new cruise ships brought to the Island?s shores.

?The and , fleets of one of the world?s leading cruise lines Royal Caribbean Line, carried an estimated 3,000 additional passengers to the Island.?

The number of people employed in the hotel industry has increased by 301 over the same period in 2004 but is still 5.4 percent lower than in 2003 and this is thought to be a direct consequence of the lower air passenger numbers.