Bermuda’s tourism decline is the result of its snotty and arrogant past, according to Cambridge Beaches Resort president Michael Winfield.He believes only by thinking outside the box will the Island be able to shed its image of being old, boring, and conservative.While other holiday destinations have successfully reinvented themselves as the playgrounds of the rich and famous, Mr Winfield believes Bermuda is still tarnished by its old stuffy image.Popular with the more affluent members of society for many years, tourism numbers have dropped in the tougher economic climate and the hotelier believes that the tourism industry as a whole must share some of the blame for that.“We got snotty and we got arrogant and also we stopped reinvesting and, I say we being the hoteliers, we sort of started taking it [our success] for granted,” he said. “I don’t think there is a hotelier in Bermuda today who is taking anything for granted.”In order to raise Bermuda’s profile, Mr Winfield, along with Port Royal Golf Course director Andrew Brooks, came up with the idea of a celebrity golf tournament.Sponsored by Cambridge Beaches and British Airways, the Hackers Cup saw celebrities such as five-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Steven Redgrave, and Gary McAllister, the ex-Liverpool and Scotland footballer, travel to the Island.“This has been a tough, tough two years and it’s difficult to come out of the box and think differently,” said Mr Winfield, “and hopefully this is one event where we are thinking differently.”Several high-profile journalists from the UK also made the trip, as did BA bosses Keith Chuter and Richard Tams, and Mr Winfield said that the project had been a direct attempt to raise the Island’s profile as a holiday destination in the UK.“It’s very difficult to convey Bermuda statically as a two-dimensional picture,” Mr Winfield said, “because everybody shows great pictures. But when you get some buzz and excitement and real people talking about it saying ‘there’s fun here’, then I think it can start to make a difference.”Bringing in celebrities for tournaments such as the Hackers Cup, and targeting the affluent members of the UK and other countries is where Mr Winfield believes the Island’s future lies. In his opinion, advertising in the traditional sense is not doing enough.“I think that’s the way you’ve got to go, not just in the UK, but everywhere,” he said. “But we’ve also got to target at the right market Bermuda’s not inexpensive. Also, we’ve got to continually reinforce the message that this is a place where affluent people come and have fun.”Judging by the feedback from those invited to play, the tournament has been a success. However, Mr Winfield said he wouldn’t judge the success of the venture until he saw what level of exposure it generated in the UK.“The definition of success for the tournament would be copy [exposure], and you need to get copy that is describing Bermuda as the ‘new’ Bermuda, not the old, boring, expensive, conservative [Island] which is what everybody thinks of it,” he said.“The real focus here is to get that copy into the newspapers, into all elements of media in the UK. That’s what we’re waiting to see.“As much as copy is important, word of mouth is just as important because [the celebrity world] it’s a small circle; they talk to each other.“While there was some hesitancy towards the first event, I think when the likes of [TV presenters] Rhodri Williams, Gethin Jones and Charlotte Jackson go back and talk it up, then hopefully there will be people wanting to come here.”